old growth, new growth

Have you ever walked into a place that felt amazing?

Interior Design did that.

Okay, there may have been other factors.

You may have seen your best friend on the other side of the amazing room.

There may have been an open bar.

But mostly, it was the design.

Recent discoveries in neuroscience show us that interior design impacts us mentally and physically, for better or worse.

Interior Design is not neutral, and it affects everyone.

A recent encounter with some hydrangeas reminded me of the impact of design.

We have 6 hydrangea bushes along our deck in the backyard.

Their cotton candy colored blooms evoke carefree feelings of childhood summer vacations, full of popsicles, taffy, sandcastles, and icy waves.

On vacation, those gorgeous, aggressively optimistic plants with their unreasonably sized blooms were just there, like the ocean.

I never thought about how they got that way. And I still don’t know how to properly care for them.

I don’t know when to cut them back, when to leave them alone.

And my lot seems to be made up of a bunch of different varieties with different needs and growth patterns.

(We may or may not have bought them off the back of a truck.)

I could figure out how to care for them. I do love research*.

But I have bigger fish to fry. In the low-stakes pursuit of growing hydrangeas, I find it more relaxing to wing it and see how it goes.

Last Fall, I decided – you know what? I am not going to cut them back at all.

Over the winter, the stems turned a beautiful stoic wintery grey.

They sat there like oversized petrified pom poms.

When spring came, new green stems sprouted up - like gangbusters.

Eureka! I thought. I have figured it out!

The new stems grew fast and soon completely covered the over-wintered, grey, stick-like stems.

Vibrant, green leaves were everywhere! Tra la tra la tra laaaa!

SO many healthy leaves…and more and more leaves….but, wait, no flowers….at all.

Sigh. I tacitly accepted my bloomless fate, and the fact that I had not. figured. it. out.

Resigned, I almost didn’t notice a few days later when a single bluish white bloom poked out.

I went right over and investigated.

Following the stem down, I discovered that this bloom had grown an old, grey stem…and that there were others!

Hidden buds and tiny leaves were under the leaves, not getting any sun.

Complete, able, and full of beauty, these buds had the blossomy goods but were not getting what they needed to thrive.

The blooms were there all along.

They just needed more light.

What I did next was to cut back the leaves to let in the light.

This does not look amazing (yet?), and is most certainly not the way to take care of hydrangeas, but I am a designer, not a gardener ; )

In some ways, we are very much like hydrangeas.

We come in many strains, with many different needs and ways of growing.

At Megan Mitchell Studios, we believe that we are all complete, able, and full of beauty.

We work with your specific varieties to create interior environments that allow you and your people to thrive.

If you would like to talk with me or have questions, I would love to talk with you.

*I have done and continue to do tons of research on how Interior Design can benefit your mental, physical, and neurological well-being : )