Acid-loving plants want ground somewhere below pH 6.5, and often well below it. Soil across most of this valley sits between 7.5 and 8.2. That is not a small gap — pH is a logarithmic scale, so soil at 8.0 is around thirty times less acidic than soil at 6.5.
Azalea, rhododendron, blueberry, pieris and most hollies belong to this group, and they are among the most frequently regretted purchases in this region. They come home from a garden center looking healthy, hold on for a season or two on whatever was in the nursery pot, and then go slowly chlorotic and thin and die over three or four years.
The part almost nobody accounts for is the water. Irrigation water here is hard and alkaline. So even if you build a perfect acidic bed with imported media and sulfur, every watering pushes the pH back up, and you are working against the hose for the life of the plant. That is the reason a well-built acid bed still fails, and why it has very little to do with how carefully it was prepared.
There is an honest version of this. A container with a proper ericaceous mix, an acidifying fertilizer, and rainwater or collected water where you can manage it — that works, and people do it successfully. A raised bed with imported media and an annual sulfur program works too, with attention. Both are a hobby you are taking on rather than a planting you are installing.
What does not work is putting an acid-loving plant in native ground and hoping. We will tell you that before we sell you one.
