I Thought This Plant Was Dead... Then I Did THIS!

I think gardening is hard. Sometimes all it takes is rescuing the right plant. I picked up this Flamingo Willow from Asda, reduced from £13 to just £3.12. And although it looked beyond saving with wilted, crispy leaves and severe dieback, I wasn't ready to give up on it. At first glance, this Salix integra flamingo looked beyond saving. The leaves were brown, crispy and wilted. But after checking the trunk and graft with a scratch test, I could see it was still green and alive. So it was time to give it a second chance. The first job was a hard prune to remove all the dead and crispy growth, cutting each branch back to healthy green wood. It might look drastic, but Flamingo or Willow respond really well to pruning and often come back stronger than ever. Next, I moved it into a much larger 30cm pot, filled with fresh multi-purpose compost, before planting it at the same depth as it was growing before. Willows love moisture, so keeping the compost evenly damp is going to be the key to helping this tree recover. Once planted, I gave it a really deep soak. To finish, I added a layer of bark mulch to lock in moisture and keep the roots cool. Now the hard work is done. All that's left to do now is keep it watered and wait for fresh pink and white growth to appear over the next few weeks. Would you have bought this or left it behind? Let me know in the comments if you think this bargain makes a full recovery.