About Us
Experience the Best in Plant Nurseries
Quality Plants for Your Beautiful Garden
East Fork Azalea and Conifer Farm is dedicated to providing a wide variety of premium plants, including over 170 types of azaleas, 59 distinct conifers, and various hardy shrubs. With over 35 years of experience, we are committed to delivering excellence in plant quality and customer satisfaction.
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Transform your garden with our exceptional selection of azaleas, conifers, and shrubs. Discover the beauty and diversity of our plants at East Fork Azalea and Conifer Farm.
About Collections
A little insight into each collection.
Sommerville Collection
Earl spent much of his adult life collecting and hybridizing native azaleas. The Earl Sommerville garden has one of the largest collections of Native Azalea selections and cultivars in this country. Many have a genetic background that includes Rhododendron flammeum and/or austrinum and are excellent for being heat and humidity tolerant.
His garden is situated in Georgia at the foot of Little Kennesaw Mountain, near Kennesaw Mountain, where a bloody Civil War battle was fought just before the siege of Atlanta.
In Earl's Garden, some of the azaleas are pure species, some named hybrids, most of which are natural hybrids and their seedlings. Georgia has 13 native species, many of them growing in the same area and blooming at the same time, which produced a wealth of natural hybrids. Earl was especially interested in breeding native azaleas with ball-truss blooms.
Strickland Collection
The Kelly Strickland azalea collection is the result of a lifetime of searching out the best forms of native azaleas.
Kelly grew up in the Marianna, Florida, area where his
family owned property along the Chipola River
He worked for the Florida Dept of Transportation, as did his friend, Al Burke. They collected plants, rescuing many from the bulldozers at road construction sites, collected seed, pollinated blooms using other native azaleas, and bought several Exbury azaleas to use for pollen. They grew hundreds or maybe even thousands of seedlings, with the goal of extra large blooms of all colors, plus heat and humidity tolerance and exceptional bloom heads.
When it came to seedlings, Kelly was scrupulous in his selections, out of 100, only four or five were good enough to save for further evaluation.
East Fork Nursery is fortunate to have a large number of azaleas from the Strickland collection and will have various ones available at different times.
Greenleaf Collection
Robert is a retired Auburn University professor emeritus of music and composer.
His enthusiasm for native azaleas is due to the influence of his parents. His mother was a botanist and his father, Walter Greenleaf, was a professor of horticulture at Auburn from 1947-1982
Robert grew up around plants, and when he was hired at Auburn on the music faculty, his father gave him a lot. The first thing he did on the lot, instead of building a house, was plant some native azaleas. They are still there, from 40 years ago."
Greenleaf eventually made connections with R. O'Neal "Smitty" Smitherman, Dennis Rouse and Tom Corley, associates from Auburn University who introduced him to hybridizing azaleas. The men shared tips, insights and plants as they grew their hybrids.
At one point Robert had 2,600 plants in pots. He had to check on these little plants every day, grow them in the right mix, head off fungal disease and insects. He held the plants in pots for about three years to see them bloom. Then he selected the plants he thought had the best flower forms and colors and planted them in his yard in a design like an opera - blooms that come on in different acts.
East Fork Nursery has been honored to be chosen to propagate this extremely fine collection of native azaleas.
Vineland Collection
The Horticultural Research Institute in Vineland, Ontario, located on the shores of Lake Ontario 12 miles from Niagara Falls began growing and hybridizing deciduous azaleas in the 1950's.
Click on the link below to see more about their program as well as photos of many of their azaleas.
file:///C:/Users/New%20User/Downloads/Vineland%20Azaleas.pdf
We have been growing 18 of these azaleas and have been impressed with their beauty, their hardiness, and their mildew resistance. They have done well in East Tennessee.
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