Plants with meaning, part 3

Here's the third installment of "plants with meaning" - also known as "gardening success from cuttings." 🌺  I was pretty excited about a couple of new baby shrubs I got going from parent plants last summer.

A disclaimer before I start: of the cuttings I took to try to root, two of these came from public places.  While I don't normally help myself to cutting from plants in public places (without permission), these came from plants in unusual circumstances, where I thought it was ok.  I'll explain as I go.  

In the summer, when I'm visiting the town where I grew up, I often park my car in an empty parking lot at my former elementary school in the middle of town and go run.  I do this because there are a lot of great jogging routes from the school, and they pass a lot of the beautiful old houses I like to look at.

Anyway, each time I returned to my car last summer, I noticed a small garden on the side of the school that wasn't there when I was a child.  The grassy area on the side of the school was cordoned off, and there was a painter's lift machine parked outside the school.  The school was locked and the entry way blocked as repairs were being done on the historic building.

The garden was overgrown and in awful condition, which was sad.  (It had obviously been planted with love at some point.  I wondered if the person who planted it had passed away?)  You couldn't walk over to the garden without crossing some yellow tape, which I always did.  (There was never anyone working there when I was there; it was strange, all the signs of work-in-progress were there every day, yet I never saw anyone there although it was always the middle of the day.)

I would end every run walking around the garden and looking at the flowers growing through the weeds.  (This is the second year I've visited the overgrown garden; if it's in the same shape next summer I'm tempted to go and weed it; it just seems so pitiful.)

Anyway, on the side of the garden was a big hydrangea bush, with exactly two flowers.  (Maybe it was wanting some fertilizer?)  Anyway, they were beautiful blue flowers.  I've always loved blue hydrangeas.

Finally one day I decided to clip one of the hydrangea flowers.  After all, the garden was a mess, it was cordoned off so no one could get to it, and I doubted anyone even saw it.  Me, I could enjoy this hydrangea flower every day.  So I cut it.  (That was my justification, anyway.)

I took my little flower home and put it in a vase in the window.  It was *beautiful.*  (I really believe no one could have enjoyed this flower like I did!)

The blue hydrangea looked perfect a week later.  So perfect, that I took it home in the vase to Tennessee, where I put it in a window and it continued to look perfect for another month.  (Another thing I love about hydrangeas?  Their incredibly long lives in vases...)

From time to time I would take the hydrangea flower out of the vase.  I noticed it was growing LOTS of roots, without my doing anything to encourage them.  (No root hormone added.)  This hydrangea wanted to live!

So when the Tennessee heat began to subside at the end of September, I planted the hydrangea stem in the backyard.  I was thrilled to note that it held it's flower and looked green and vibrant all fall.  When the cold hit in December, the flower head finally fell off.  We had a super freeze at the end of the month; I covered my little stem with a towel for a couple of days and kept my fingers crossed.

Just the other day (mid-January) I checked it, and saw two green growths at the stem coming out of the ground.  Yes indeed, it wants to live!  With the smallest of effort (all I did was put it in the ground and cover it when it got super cold) this hydrangea rooted and established itself.  This is one hardy plant!

I'm so excited about it; I've always wanted a blue hydrangea, and I didn't imagine this one cutting would root on it's own.

So now I have a blue hydrangea in my yard that came from the garden of my elementary school.  I love that!

Here's what it looked like when I planted it:

The Kingsford Park blue hydrangea.
After about five weeks, the blue flower head faded to a beautiful light green color.
Look how healthy this cutting looked after five weeks in a vase!
It's hard to tell in this pic, but the bottom is completely covered in roots it developed.

Well, I was going to continue but this post was longer than I expected.  I'll save my next cutting success for the next post.

To be continued next time...🌸🌺