Irritating Plant of the Month September 2019 - the pathetic hydrangea

To put this month's plant of despair into context, here is the 'before' picture, how this hydrangea looked at point of purchase.

This is the Hydrangea serrata 'Diadem' who I bought from the Belvoir Flower Show last year.  I was very pleased with it when I bought it and decided to grow it in a pot in the Courtyard Garden.   I feel I should mention that I am quite good at growing hydrangeas.  I have a few and they are all doing well.  I have a Miss Saori in a pot in the Courtyard Garden that has been growing really well for a few years now, I am not a destroyer of hydrangeas.  Does this all sound a bit defensive?  probably.....

 

Dear reader, I present to you exhibit A, this is how the hydrangea now looks.  Somebody has let it get rather weed infested.

but if you peer closely you can see it is just about alive still.

I decided to repot it; there were two reasons for this.  Firstly I worried that its decline might be vine weevil so I wanted to empty it out of its pot to check the roots.  Thankfully there was no sign of the dreaded weevil.  The roots also looked fairly healthy, so I decided to repot it into a smaller pot with fresh compost to see if that would help.  

Here it is, deweeded and in fresh compost.  I then tucked it away into a shadier part of the greenhouse to see if it would improve.

A few days later and....

Well its no worse at any rate, I like to think it looks a little more perky.....

Time, of course, will tell.