When the rhododendron leaves disappear, curling into themselves for warmth, you know the day is a cold one. The shrubs you see here are actually a miniature version of their more common broader-leafed relative. We used to have one in front of our house, and whenever the temperature dropped well below freezing, this was their disgusted stance. It must be their way of survival, because being a broad-leafed evergreen in this climate zone is no mean feat.
We dug our rhodie out years ago; it simply got too big and unwieldy for its space. I rather naively planted a wedding cake viburnum in its place, which outgrew the area in a few years. Currently there’s a slow-growing umbrella pine in that spot, which looks to remain for the foreseeable future. It’s airy enough to allow for sightlines beyond its elegant whorls, and it too remains evergreen the year round. The neighbors across the street still have a few rhododendron shrubs, so if we need a quick gauge of how cold it is we have only to look up the road and see whether the leaves are in hiding.
