My friend Carolyn has been overseas for a couple of years and left her plants with one of her family members. This particular plant she has had since she was nine years old and it held a lot of sentimental value. I remember it quite clearly in her flats during our twenties and then her own home after that. Suffice to say, she’s had the plant over 30 years.

What was left of the plant was rescued by Carolyn and placed into an old pill bottle with water soaked cotton wool.

It was delivered to me with a query of ‘how good are you with plants? And could I try and save it. Well being up to a challenge I decided yes, I would do my best to save it. I like gardening and I’m from a family of trained nursery people, so I like to think, I have learned a lot from just watching or ‘osmosis’ (pardon the pun).

I’d been thinking for a while about doing some cuttings and starting a little tree nursery at home for when we are ready to plant out the back of the house, so I grabbed myself some rooting dip. I was pretty sure this particular plant (I’m not sure what it is) would root from just water and it did in fact have a small root on it, but I decided to give it the best shot possible, so I snipped some of the bottom of the plant and dipped it in the root mixture. I then put it in a pretty big pot for the size of the plant so it would not have too many issues with retaining water.

I went away for a few days over Christmas (24th to 27th) and when I got back I was stunned to see the progress this plant had made. It sure has a strong will to survive. I had wondered about pruning the large leaves off it but am glad now that I left them.

Today I finally got around to photographing the plant – so here it is as of today (30 December).

If anyone can tell me the name of the plant that would be great, as it would be helpful to look up what conditions it actually likes (though it seems to be thriving anyway!).

I’ll be doing a series of updates – perhaps every 10 days – to track the progress.

Update – 28 January 2015 – the plant is doing very well

My friend has returned overseas and has left the plant (which we now know is Swedish Ivy) in my care. It sits by my fish tank in the kitchen and gets plenty of filtered sunlight. I keep rotating it every few days so it grows evenly. As you can see from the photos, it’s officially saved. It would take some serious neglect from here for this plant to die!