Japanese Azalea is a garden centre staple. As such it rather falls outside this diary's interest in native and naturalised plants (though all garden plants have wild ancestry somewhere of course). My father got this one as a free gift with some bulbs he ordered so I potted it up for the patio in a larger terracotta pot.

 It put me mind of a point which I haven't really addressed before. Azalea japonica needs an ericaceous (i.e. acidic) soil. They share this trait with other members of the Rhododendron genus whose plant family is indeed Ericaceae. This diary has its roots in London clay and Hertfordshire chalk so I garden to those conditions and don't seek to change the PH balance of the soil selecting suitable plants accordingly.

 The secret to successful gardening is not really the mystical "green fingers". It's more a case of understanding what conditions a plant needs to flourish. That's also relevant to seeking out wildflowers and particularly relevant if you want to cultivate them. The flora of a limestone scarp is very different to the flora of a a peat bog. Some plants are generalists but most wild plants have a very specific ecological niche. The horticultural trade tends to favour generalists but the Ericaceae includes some popular plants.

 In the case of this little Azalea I found an old pot that had been filled with compost once upon a time. This was probably a standard compost of a fairly neutral PH. However it had been sat under a pine tree for years and was topped up with pine needles in various layers of decomposition which I mixed in then topped off with a mulch of more of the same. Pine needles are acidic so hopefully this will provide a suitable soil.