groovy, your oak leaves are a perfect natural mulch for your azaleas. You'd have nothing to gain by adding the work of removing the leaves and replacing them with pine straw; the pine straw is often used by people without access to oak :)

Thanks! that is great to hear. Perhaps that is the reason they have grown so big.

I had 65 different cultivars of rhodies/azaleas blooming in my gardens in mid May. They all sit in oak leaf beds. There's nothing better. Nothing.

Beech (Fagus) leaf mulch is also excellent, I try to collect as much as I can in the surrounding parcs and gardens every fall.

Olivier.