When environmental tweaks aren’t enough it’s ok to strip it back and start again.

We’ve had this heirloom/memory Christmas Cactus in our house for seven years. This year it flowered for the first time and it reminded me of a quote Rhoda Phillips shared recently 🌸

“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” — Alexander Den Heijer

The original plant belonged to my great-grandmother. My Granny took a cutting and had a large plant in her porch. My Mum and sister both have successful offspring from the same plant.

Our cutting has always just seemed a bit sad and never flowered. Were we feeding it too much? Too little? Was it in the wrong place? did it need a bigger pot? A soil change?

We’ve tried lots of things over the years, to no avail. Last October I finally decided to start over. I took off two of the happiest-looking leaves and put them in a small pot with new soil. One of the cuttings took hold and with some gentle watering, we finally got a flower this year. There was something about this accidental family heirloom flowering that made me especially happy, even more so because our four-year-old daughter has now asked for a cutting.

So was it changing the environment that helped our Christmas Cactus to bloom? We had made lots of environmental changes before and it is still sitting in the same spot.

I think the wider lesson might be that tweaks to the environment sometimes aren’t enough and a more fundamental change is required. It can seem hard or even mean, but sometimes we need to strip something right back for it to bloom.

As a p.s. I repotted this plant just after I left my last role. It felt like a bit leap and I was sad about it in many ways. It’s probably just a coincidence but I like the idea of this heirloom plant and I both changing our environment and seeing how things go. So far so good!

Happy New Year!