first pic.. i see no water tray ... does that mean the pot does not drain?

no.. its not going dormant in the middle of summer.. presuming you are north of the equator ...

tip it out of the pot.. and show us a pic of the roots ... i suspect they are not doing well ...

the other plant.. i would presume dead ... though you never really said how long its been since it had leaves ....

take it out of the pot.. and see if you have any viable roots ...

pruning should never kill an otherwise healthy plant.. i doubt that was the issue ....

is that a water meter??... do you rely on it ... they are notoriously unreliable ... i suspect improper watering and the attendant root issues ...

ken

I have had loss of foliage on hydrangeas in late July due to thunderstorms that injured the tree branches above the hydrangea. It lost all leaves but, I maintained the soil as evenly moist as I could. and it leafed back in the Spring. In most typical US & Canadian locations, macrophyllas will leaf out by the end of May; if they do not, you can consider it dead.

Since your plant is potted, you could check for life in the stems using a scratch test but that will not tell you if the stems are dead. If you decide to wait and water it until May 2022, do not overwater it, as the lack of leaves means it does not need as much water as before. Just a tad less. Water if the soil feels dry when you insert a finger into the soil to a depth of 3". I would keep the pot getting either morning sun only or full sun. Normally full sun is not good because the leaves will suffer in the hot summer sun but, there are no leaves now. Just do not let it get too dry either if it is sunny, hot and windy. Use the finger method to see if it needs water (as opposed to watering on a schedule like every "x" days).

I too have had issues with those water meters. Mine read dry about half and hour after my watering system completed watering the hydrangeas. Brooother.... I use now the finger method. If you want to rely on sight alone, I would look at how do the leaves look between 6-8am. If the are wilted or droopy at 6-8am, the plant needs water immediately.

Thanks to you both for your responses!

I received the aeonium as a gift in that pot/vase, and never thought of changing it. Here is a pic of the roots (or what I could show without knocking too much dirt off).

Here is the roots of the Hydrangea - I really do think it is dead. :(

Maybe I should move the aeonium into the pot I had the Hydrangea in?

Is there anything that would actually thrive in the first pot/vase? It is really pretty and would love to keep using it. However, you are correct, it does not drain.

Thank you again to you both for your help! I am just a beginner and this has been so helpful. Most plants I killed in the past had root rot, I definitely over watered them. To me, watering them was showing them love... I learned that isn't the case! So that is why I was trying the watering meter, I didn't want to overwater. However, it sounds like that plan didn't work anyways.

The hydrangea is NOT a houseplant!! They are sometimes sold as that for holidays or decorative purposes but they cannot survive long term indoors. Consider them to be a temporary decorative item at best, like a bouquet of cut flowers. And cutting it back hard after flowering has also likely killed it if trying to grow it indoors did not.

ALL plants - unless they are bog or water plants - need good drainage. And that includes the pot as well as the planting media. If the container it is planted in does not have drainage holes, then the plant is at risk. The media will not drain thoroughly, you can't flush out the salts or water fully and root rot becomes a very real possibility.

When you have a decorative container with no drain holes, do NOT plant directly into it. But you can use it to disguise or 'pretty up' the more utilitarian container - with drain holes!! - it is in, lifting it out to water well and drain thoroughly before slipping it back into the decorative container.

All of my houseplants have a decorative container or cache pot they live in in winter. Currently, they are all outside - sans the the fancy pots - for their summer vacation.

btw ken, there are a fair number of tender succulents (and an assortment of other, temperate-origin plants) that DO go dormant in summer! It helps to know what one is talking about before giving out dubious advice :-)

I did get the Hydrangea as a gift for Valentines day, so I assume that keeping it inside for as long as I did was lucky in the first place! lol. I am not so sad that it died then.

The pot that I had moved the Hydrangea into (pictured above) does have a drainage hole/drip tray. So would it be wise to move my aeonium into that pot?

I am also concerned after reading all of these comments, about my other succulents. My mother in law gave me these for Mother's day this year. They seem to be doing well,

but again, no draining holes in these containers. Should I consider repotting them also? Maybe I can fit them all into the larger pot with the aeonium?

Thanks to everyone again for all of your help!

I made the mistake when I was first introduced to succulents about putting them in some cute decorative ceramic containers (mugs and funky pots) and no surprise, although it surprised me at the time, they all died. Your succulents are guaranteed to die in containers with no drainage, no question. Also, what type of soil are they sitting in? How often do you water them? How much bright light do they receive?

I used to kill all of my plants too and the last 2 years I've finally read up properly on plant care and have been trying to educate myself along the way. I've come very far (tons more to learn still) and I'm sure you will too! Sometimes it's trial and error and there are things that seem like basic common knowledge that I used to pay no attention to that would make any seasoned plant caretaker cringe. Such as using the same soil (even garden soil) for all plants, planting straight into decorative containers with no drainage, no consideration for light assuming they all need bright light, planting even the tiniest plant in the largest container believing it would make the plant grow bigger etc etc. You don't know what you don't know right?

In my opinion, I don't think succulents are the best beginner plants. I'm still learning with them and still find them easier to kill than even my alocasias and calatheas. In my limited experience the amount you water your succulents really depends on how much sun and heat they get. I have several now that are thriving for several months outdoors but Iive in North Carolina and it's hot as hell and they receive at least 6-8 hours of bright sunlight. Make sure your soil dries out completely before even thinking of watering again. I honestly let my soil stay bone dry for a few days or week (or more?). I wait until the leaves "tell" me they need more water. I have no watering schedule, I just go based on how they look. They'll start to look slightly dull and the leaves might start to pucker and get slightly less plump. I don't let them go too far of course but don't be afraid to let them go longer than what feels natural without water. And then when you do finally water them, soak the soil really well until water comes out of the drainage hole. Make sure they get bright light for a couple hours a day. Make sure they're in a very well draining gritty soil. I'm not at the point of making my own potting mixture myself, so a bag of Miracle Gro Cactus and Succulent mix is perfectly fine and I even add some extra perlite in with it. And absolutely switch them out immediately into something that has drainage holes! They may look ok now but with succulents they will look great for a while until one day the leaves start falling off and yellowing and getting translucent and that will be because the base and roots are a rotted mushy mess. Terracotta, concrete or clay pots or anything porous work great since they wick away excess moisture from the soil.

And when in doubt, venture over to YouTube! I think looking up plant care videos on YT has been the biggest game changer for me. Almost any question you may have is answered in great detail!

Here's a great, very easily understandable video that explains why drainage holes are a must, and why rocks in the bottom are not helping.

"And when in doubt, venture over to YouTube! I think looking up plant care videos on YT has been the biggest game changer for me. Almost any question you may have is answered in great detail!"

The problem with this plan is that anyone can post videos on YouTube and many that do have no earthly idea what they are talking about!! You will get more BAD advice than you will accurate advice and unless you are knowledgeable enough to determine the difference, you're stuck in the same uninformed state.

Much better to take the advice of well established authorities and GW/Houzz is lucky to have a semi-resident authority on growing anything in a container in the form of Al, aka tapla. Read any of his many highly informative posts on the Container Gardening forum and you will be guaranteed to know more than you can ever find on any poncy YouTube video!!

It is possible to keep plants in pots w/o holes, but please know that adding too much water one time could kill your plant, and substances from fertilizer or tap water are unable to flush out and may accumulate to levels that can make your plant ill.

Tiff, I might suggest that for an experienced grower that knows what they are doing. But I don't think we are doing any newbies much of a service if we suggest that is a possible method to follow. They rarely know enough about soil media, watering practices and how to achieve good drainage under even recommended container gardening practices to have much success dealing with containers with NO drain holes!!

If you are ever given another hydrangea admire it for a few hours then begin hardening it off to outdoor conditions. Then either repot into a larger container or plant it in the ground depending on how much space you have and whether they will overwinter outdoors in your climate. As GG said, they’re not houseplants. I was sent this one in early May. It’s never lived indoors and will continue to live outside permanently.

P.s. just noticed you got yours for Valentines. In which case, depending on your climate, it might be too cold to harden it off immediately, especially since it will have been forced to flower very early. The best you can do then is to cross your fingers and put it in the coolest, lightest spot you have until it warms up a bit outside.

The video really doesn't 'explain' anything, it only provides an illustration of how the location of a perched water table changes when using a "drainage layer" of particles more than 2.1X the size of the particles from which the medium is made. The forces at work here are gravity and capillary attraction, with the force of capillary attraction being equal to the sum of water's tendency to hold together/ stick to itself (cohesion) and stick to other objects, primarily soil particles (adhesion). When there is no drainage layer, water drains from drain holes until the forces of gravity and capillarity are precisely equal, then it stops. At this stage of equilibrium, if you add a given amount of additional water, that exact amount of water will drain from the pot. The water remaining in the pot (perched water) saturates a layer of grow medium at the pot's bottom, robbing roots of the oxygen they need to function normally.

Most bagged media hold between 3-6" (or more) of perched water. For the most part, 'adhesion' is the governing force which determines how tall the perched water table is, and how much perched water remains in the pot. This is because the smaller/ finer soil particles are, the greater the surface area of the particles is, and it follows that the greater the surface area of the particles is, the greater will be the force of adhesion. Adding large particles like peastone/ gravel as a "drainage layer" diminishes the surface area, thereby reducing the force of adhesion in the "drainage layer", thereby reducing the capillary 'pull' of the drainage layer, thereby creating the perched water table above the "drainage layer".

The guy in the video also made a mistake by saying water does not pass easily between dissimilar layers of soil. How 'easily' water passes through physically dissimilar strata depends on both the comparative particle size disparity AND how the layers are situated. The coarse material must be the substrata (lower layer) and the size of the particles in the substrata must be at least 2.1X larger than the size of particles in the upper strata if water is to perch. Also, if all soil particles are larger than approximately .100", no water will 'perch', no matter how strata are situated.

While a perched water table might be considered as a blessing from the grower's perspective, only for the fact it increases intervals between water applications, from the plant's perspective it should always be considered somewhere between a potentially serious limitation and a plant's worst nightmare.

Al

Thank you, GG. I don't like to assume anyone else is incapable of doing anything I've done, which would be far from reality. My first plant that nobody but me looked after was in a pot w/o a drain hole, for about 10 yrs. I have several of them currently. With more information, people can make more informed decisions &, if interested, conduct their own experiments. Knowing why something usually fails, or fails more often is very valuable information, IMVHO.