Looking to plant some in font of the house. Anyone have any advise for me? All advise is helpful.

My advice is to pick another plant. Pickiest damn plant to grow. Some people can grow them, most can’t. Beautiful if you can grow them. I’ve wasted a lot of money trying to get everything right for them, and they all died.

Bingo. Had great ones in New Orleans, but could not grown them in my pecan pasture turned into a subdivision.

Mom brought her azaleas from my childhood home in Marshall (sandy loam) to SW Houston (back clay) to Point Blank (sandy loam). Now mom couldn’t kill a plant if she tried.

Anyhow, they’ve been at my Point Blank place living happily under the pine trees for forty years. They get very little maintenance, annual bed cleaning, hardly ever need water. They’ll be blooming soon and they are really something when they do.

If you can’t grow them it’s the soil. And you’re not mom. You can do what I did here in North Texas to get my three pine trees to prosper. Back hoe, huge deep hole, fill with acidic soils, sand and pine bark mulch while adding sulphur as it fills. Three huge pine trees fill that hole now, 20 years later. I was digging in a limestone rich area, thus all the acid.

But I gave up trying to grow a dogwood here. They grow wild in Point Blank. We clean them from the beds as they pop up.

Ive read they like a acidy soil , like pine bark shavings is good around the bed.

Mine get auto mulched with pine needles.

Yes Acidic soil, pine tees add acid to the soil and Azaleas do very good under and around pines for that reason

Avoid direct sun if possible. I would also avoid planting next to house where they would get reflected heat from like brick.

If you don’t have acidic soil you’ll never get the full benefit of their floral display without a lot of work.

What do i mix with my soil to get it acidy

Sulfur, pine barkmulch, sheep manure compost.

4-6” of pine straw helps too

In Houston, you basically dig a big hole and fill it with sandy loam, unless you are lucky enough to have pine trees. Mom lived a few blocks behind Bering Hardware for many years and her azaleas flourished. She had trees.

Those same plants were moved to my Point Blank place decades ago when we started building.