Summer comes at last, bringing colorful blooms
- Laurie Craig
- Jun 23
- 3 min read
Bob and Maria Mattson are dwarfed by their 30-plus-year-old rhododendrons and a lanky cedar in their sunny Mendenhall Valley front yard on Saturday, June 21, 2025. (Laurie Craig / Juneau Independent)
Juneau’s cold, rainy spring suddenly switched last week to heat and sunshine just as the summer solstice arrived on Friday. Juneauites have dug out their sun hats and shorts to celebrate. The land is sporting lush growth. Dense vegetation creates walls of green in wild places. The sound of lawnmowers buzzes through neighborhoods along with the eruption of ornamental flowering plants.
The most dramatic flowers now are large colorful blooms on rhododendron bushes. The woody shrubs grow well in Juneau’s cool, wet climate and acidic soil. Most rhododendrons are evergreen shrubs that keep their leaves through winter, drooping when the temperature drops below freezing. When it warms, the large leathery leaves perk up. Many of the plants are large, require little attention and produce clustered blossoms for a brief time every spring. This year the flowering seems to be later than usual due to chilly weather.
Horticulturalist David Lendrum of Landscape Alaska has been providing landscaping plants to Juneauites for 40 years. He offered details about how homeowners can select the best plant for their site.
“The huge rhododendron family is incredibly diverse, (has) multitudes of colors and leaf shapes, a wide spectrum of sizes and styles, as well as being adaptable to almost every climate zone,” Lendrum said by email on Monday. Key to choosing the right rhododendron is understanding the size the plant will grow.
“The newer hybrids, especially the ones like those at Wells Fargo Bank in the valley, are called ‘Yaks,’” Lendrum added. “They will make full-sized flowers and leaves, but will be manageable for the domestic garden.”
He suggests feeding the shrubs in the spring before they bloom to ensure the plant flowers the following year. Pests like root weevils can be discovered by notches they create on the leaf edges.
A drive through Mendenhall Valley reveals numerous vividly colored rhododendrons, each plant showing single colors. Pale pink, hot pink, fuchsia, white, magenta and red blossoms look like pompoms on densely packed mature shrubs. Soon the flowers will fade and their petals will drop leaving only shiny, dark green leaves as an attractive plant.
When Maria and Bob Mattson moved into their valley home in the 1990s, they discovered two small rhododendron bushes struggling to grow amid their forested backyard. A garden transplant operation turned the wimpy shrubs into one of their street’s most brightly blooming front yards.
“The pink rhododendron was about the size of a washtub when we moved it to the front yard,” Bob recalled on Saturday, June 21. “The lilac-colored rhododendron was smaller. We moved it about four years later.” At that time Mattson said it was the size of a waste paper basket. Today the pink ‘rhodie’ measures nine feet tall and likely the same width.
He notes the hardiness of the big plants in his yard. When heavy snow presses down the branches they rejuvenate after winter and there is rarely permanent damage. Spring growth props them up naturally.
Adjacent to the large rhododendrons a tall healthy cedar tree grows with its gracefully drooping boughs. Juneau’s climate normally doesn’t support cedars, which grow well in southern Southeast Alaska, but this transplant is thriving also. Bob brought it from Prince of Wales Island in about 1995. Heavy equipment was required to dig the seven-foot-tall evergreen from the forested backyard where it initially was planted as a sapling. Now, it reaches about 18 feet high. Sunshine and an open western exposure nurtures growth.
Perhaps the cold spring was worth the wait. Maybe.
• Laurie Craig is a former naturalist and interpreter at the U.S. Forest Service’s Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, artist and historical writer.
Carolyn Kelley’s yard (left) features a multicolor blossom with a flashy center and lighter outer petals on Monday, June 23, 2025. At right, Chan Hopson holds her pug Bennie before her medium-sized brilliant rhododendron shrub on Monday, June 23, 2025. (Laurie Craig / Juneau Independent)
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