Because I love plants and blogging, I am constantly taking pictures.  As a result, I have quite a lot of photos to go through and it can be a week or two (okay sometimes a few months), before I get to them.

Well, since it has been rather cold outside and I haven’t had to do much of anything in my garden, I decided to be productive and go through some of my photos that I had taken in the fall.

I was contacted by a former co-worker who asked me to do a consult of his mother’s garden.  When he gave me her address, I was thrilled that she lived only 5 minutes away from my house.  

His mother was quite a delightful person and was a native of France.  Her garden reflected her European roots.  She had many different types of plants focusing mainly on plants native to Europe. 

As I was leaving, I passed by a large Willow tree and underneath it’s canopy, I spotted a glimpse of an assortment of potted plants.

As I looked more closely, I could see that many of these plants had seen better days.  In fact, it was a very motley group of plants.

Hospital for Plants

Her son, seeing my questioning glance, explained that his mother had a huge soft spot for struggling and sometimes dying plants.

She would often peruse the discount sections of nurseries (including some big box stores) where sickly plants would be for sale.  She would then take them home where she worked hard to nurse them back to health.

The filtered shade from the willow tree provided protection from the sun and the wind, which was the perfect micro-climate for these plants to try to recuperate.

Although she had some failures, she did have quite a few successes.

 The basil plant above did so well that it’s roots had grown into the grass underneath.

Seeing this plant hospital got me to thinking…..do any of you like to rescue plants?  What type of ‘hospital’ do you have for them?

I would love to hear your stories 🙂

Steps Towards Curing the Garden Blahs….Where to Place Plants?