I'm rethinking the azaleas I chose. They were ata nursery, and had no tags on them, the nursery was going to move to another state and everyone was buying out the plants. Lucky me no one bothered the azaleas. Their were 10 perfect ones, no tags though. All 100% condition I picked them carefully because theyre were orange, purple, white, pink, orange, and red. I'm sure they must be encore's I'm looking at the bush now, and see more pink buds forming atleast 1/3 of the bush is covered in the buds, I see some other buds that are brown, possibly for next year. 2 of the buds opened today, very happy.

The cardboard didn't help with maintaining a moist root area, but isn't totally responsible gor what happened, either. It's very tempting to put down something like cardboard, newspapers or landscape fabric to suppress weeds, but they really do more harm then good. Weeds grow through them and root into them and become harder to deal with in the long run. It would be best to remove the cardboard, bite the proverbial bullet and pull the weeds by hand. Once the area is reasonably weed free, it's not that big a chore to keep it that way. Declined really is a better description than died. The branches showing the most extreme drooping will not revive, but the stems themselves should be fine. Cut them back to an area showing green cambium and they should put forth new growth. There is still ample time for lots of regrowth before fall. There are some root diseases which can cause this kind of rapid collapse, but I am reasonably confident that you will find very dry root balls. Should they prove to be nicely moist, you are then dealing with a more serious condition for which there is really no cure. Fingers crossed.

My wife and I planted dwarf azaleas across the front of our house. We live just outside of New Orleans and azaleas love this area. I have them in my back yard and side of my house and they are doing well. These azaleas in the pictures do get direct evening sun and I feel that may not like that very much. Due to weed problems we planted these azaleas below a sheet of ground cover, and ran a soaker hose watering system under the cover and mulched over the cover. I know we have lace bugs and are treating this. two of the pictures above are the azaleas planted a year ago and the ones I am concerned about. The azalea in the pot. Is a fresh azalea from the nursery and exactly what my azaleas looked like when they were planted. Any comments, suggestions, ideas will be appreciated. jamescpittman

I'd say azalea lace bug damage. Read up on it here. You can't make the older foliage look any better but you can control the damage to any new growth. I favor Neem oil for this problem.