Hi Woodswalker,

I live near Reading, PA. I haven't heard any good reports about Encore azaleas around here. They do best along the Gulf Coast area. Even around Virginia, they aren't really good are reblooming (blooming in the summer). They may grow and bloom in the spring for you, but they probably won't be very impressive at reblooming. I would say to plant them and hope for the best. You may eventually have to replace some of them. The reason they need more sun is because they spend a great amount of effort producing buds, and plants in more sun are better at producing flower buds. Plants in shade bloom less.

Thanks... I didn't buy these for their reblooming...I planted them because I needed evergreen shrubs that can handle both sun & shade. The area gets sun now, but when the trees mature it will be shade.

It is actually quite hard to find a shade-tolerant evergreen. The labels on the arborvitae say that they require sun. (although I did have them growing at my old house, which had a Norway Maple. They looked kind of scraggly though.)

I have several Encores here at the top of zone 7a and they do fine. I have 'Autumn Royalty' and 'Autumn Sangria'. They seem to need more sun than most azaleas to boom well, especially for good rebloom in Fall. However, more sun also bleaches flowers faster. This spring they were just covered in blooms.

Maples have really greedy roots once they get big and you may have a problem getting anything to do well under it. Been there, had that! LOL! We removed our maples! Now a Japanese maple probably is not so greedy. But, red, silver, and other large growers can be thugs.

It is actually quite hard to find a shade-tolerant evergreen.

Depends on how much shade and shelter you have. For shade tolerant broadleafed evergreens, you might look up Pieris, Mountain laurel, Kurume azaleas, rhododendron (like Nova Zembla), Osmanthus, Mahonia, Leucothoe, for starters. There might even be some super hardy camellias.