Until recently, there were very few variegated evergreen azaleas available in the United States. These include the Satsuki varieties:

• ‘Keigetsu’. One of the earliest blooming Satsukis with light pink flowers and a red margin. The green leaves are flecked with white on a low spreading plant.

• ‘Uki-nishiki’. White flowers with many variegations of stripes, flecks, etc. of a dark purple. The leaves are flecked with yellow.

• ‘Shira-fuji’. The flowers are variable, generally white with purple variations. The leaves have an attractive distinct white margin on a dwarf plant.

• ‘Shinyo-no-tsuki’ sport. Very large white flowers with crimson blotches that bloom in June. The leaves sport cream stripes longitudinally throughout.

• ‘Fuji-no-mine’. A dwarf cultivar admired for its unusual foliage, the leaves are variegated with many flecks of yellow. Pink flowers with a darker circle that bloom in June.

American growers began introducing variegated azaleas in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One of the most popular and now widely available is ‘Silver Sword’, a sport of ‘Girard’s Rose’ with a distinct white margin bordering a dark green leaf. Other Girard plants with white margined foliage included ‘Girard’s Variegated Gem’*, a sport of pink-flowered ‘Girard’s Border Gem’*, and ‘Hot Shot Variegated’* with bright orange-red flowers. These varieties tend to have a lighter green color in their leaves.

Two southern varieties of the white-margined types discovered in the 1980s are ‘Southern Belle’, a sport of ‘Pink Ruffles’, and ‘Red Ruffles Variegated’. Another lovely choice is ‘Silver Streak’, a Greenwood hybrid with white-margined foliage and purple flowers; it is a sport of ‘Deep Purple’.