When I first became a Master Gardener several years ago, we would visit veteran Master Gardeners yards. I don't remember all the homes we visited, but one stood out to me. This Master Gardener has since moved out of the area. She had a beautiful garden one to really admire. She told us to look at the side of the house, the space between her and her neighbors. What a surprise!
In this space which she called her “hospital/cemetery” for plants. Here she would put plants that were struggling to survive and if they didn't then she would move them to the “cemetery”.
So, in the past year or two, I decided to have my own “plant hospital” for plants and hopefully, they didn't need the cemetery. In my container hospital, I have a variegated jade, Crassula ovata ‘Variegata' which started out as a sad piece of jade.
A purple Agapanthus (Agapanthaceae) now has its own family name after being included in past years in 3 other families. Most people know it by its common name “Lily of the Nile”. The root system on this looked pretty bad, so into the hospital it went.
There is also a small piece of a succulent Graptopetalum paraguayense ‘Ghost Plant'. For this succulent I needed some help from Master Gardener Carolyn A. as my Plant Finder on my tablet could not identify or come close to finding it. A small piece of this succulent was given to me, and the person didn't know what it was. It was so small it was hard to identify. I only knew that it was a succulent.
A stem of pink geranium (Germaniaceae) is crowding out the other plants, so the jade and the Ghost Plant have to fight for space and the sun. The agapanthus stands tall and oversees everything.
I know the ones in my container hospital are usually very easy to grow but these were very small, and I wasn't sure they would survive, but they have.
For the plants that are surviving, I plan to move to a permanent place in the yard. I will make room for other plants that look like they could use a plant hospital stay. I have other plants that I need to put in the cemetery compost bin or plant heaven in the sky.