Azalea-Rhododendron winter question.

[creekcowboy]

Hello everyone! Should I keep the heavy snow off my new azalea and rhododendron bushes or would I further the possibility of breaking or cracking the young branches? We just got a bunch of snow and they are drooping quite a bit.

[GroundsKeeper]

I do mine, very carefully :shock:

[holts]

You can knock the snow off of them if you are careful. The first time I looked out and saw my rhodos leaves hanging, I thought it was dying. A well known landscaping company told me that they do this when the weather is cold to conserve energy. When it warms up, the leaves perk up!

[lilkanyon]

My mother in law had rhodes in the shady part of her yard in hard winter conditions, they do absolutly nothing with them in the winter and they come back as beautiful as ever every spring. (It has trouble with leaf fungus though and every year I pick all the bad leaves off which helps curb the problem.)