Chlorosis in hydrangea. Calcarea Carbonica

This is not a gardening story. 

This is a homeopathy story.

Can Homeopathy Treat a Hydrangea?

After having COVID-19 in the fall of 2020, some of my chronic conditions worsened. Even though I’ve been treated with homeopathy for years—and eventually became a practicing homeopath myself—this doesn’t mean I’ve managed to become perfectly healthy.

Sometimes I interpret it in a fairy-tale way: real witches can never make themselves healthy and happy. Their own magic doesn’t work on them.

That’s a joke, of course 😉

We’re working on it.

COVID brought a lot of new experiences into my life—both in terms of health and my understanding of homeopathy. Through the reactivated chronic issues I faced after the illness, I discovered many insights that helped me treat my own patients. For example, in our experience—mine and my husband's—I realized that without nosodes we often can’t remove a layer of chronic illness or truly relieve suffering.

It just so happened that while selecting a remedy for myself, I had to turn to Calcarea Carbonica 200C. Be careful with this remedy when using it for adults. I’ve come to think that for non-children, its action can resemble that of a nosode. It works slowly and very deeply.

Children can be given Calcarea Carbonica multiple times. But if you're treating someone middle-aged or older — and you see clear improvement after the first dose — it’s better not to repeat it without a strong reason. Otherwise, it can lead to unwanted effects, and everything good the remedy did may disappear. If you still feel it must be repeated, do so very rarely.

For years, I’ve preferred to use homeopathic remedies in water, according to the 5th and 6th editions of Hahnemann’s Organon (thanks to David Little and Luc De Schepper for actively promoting water dosing in homeopathy). I always have a bottle with a single pellet dissolved in it.

David once advised in his book: water from a remedy bottle can be used to water plants. Five years ago, I poured a good amount of it on two of my ficus trees, and within a year they grew by nearly a meter!

That wasn’t a conscious homeopathic decision—it just happened. The ficuses got lucky.

But in the summer of 2021, my young two-year-old hydrangea developed chlorosis.

Despite good soil, the right location, proper feeding, and spraying—it got worse. New leaves turned yellow, with the veins staying green. Nothing helped, and the condition only worsened. This reminded me of how supplementing calcium in children (via vitamins or tablets) sometimes makes things even worse.

A gardener examined the plant and diagnosed it with infectious chlorosis, which is considered incurable. He advised digging up the bush and destroying it before the disease spread.

But after two months of care, I couldn’t just get rid of her. We had already bonded, this little “girl” 😍

So I started thinking: why not try what I know about prescribing Calcarea Carbonica... but for a plant?

Here’s why.

From Dr. Clarke: “Chlorosis most frequently occurs in adolescent girls and is marked by nausea, vomiting, pale-green complexion, pale lips, and more. Often associated with deep constitutional weakness or chronic intoxication.”

Calcarea Carbonica is a classic remedy used in such cases.

And it seemed logical to me to begin the treatment with a well-known polychrest that could cover a wide range of problems. After all, it’s a plant — it’s a bit hard to ask for complaints and repertorize the symptoms, right? 😆

I had a water solution of Calcarea Carbonica 200C ready.

If you want to try this for your hydrangea: take a 500 ml bottle, drop in one pellet of Calcarea Carbonica 200C, let it dissolve on its own. You can use more water for a larger plant—you're not diluting it, just distributing the energy wider.

Shake the bottle well or tap the bottom on a surface (I use my bar stool seat for this!). This dynamizes the remedy and activates its effect.

I shook the bottle a few times and watered the soil around the hydrangea.

No changes the first week. But by the second—positive dynamics.

Over the next month, the changes were striking. A few weeks later, the bush looked like it had just arrived from a nursery. Bigger, stronger, dark green leaves, and sturdy branches. It survived winter with ease, even though it usually lost half its branches to frost.

We often expect instant results.

This is why allopathic medicine is so popular—you take antibiotics or ointments, symptoms disappear, and for a while you feel “healthy.”

But in fact, we push illness deeper, becoming more and more chronically unwell, needing ever-stronger medications to "feel better" again.

Homeopathy—and healing in general—takes time.

Not just for humans, but for animals and plants too.

We must allow the body to find its own dynamic balance and not rush it.

So I gave my hydrangea time.

No second dose. Two full months. And now—she looks gorgeous and very much alive.

Gardening today is full of chemicals.

Think of gardens 30–40 years ago! Our grandparents used copper sulfate and lime paint. Colorado beetles were removed by hand. No herbicides, no “Roundup,” no “Glyphosate,” no “Hurricane.” Weeding was manual.

Now? 

My garden feels like a chemistry lab.

I realized I couldn’t restore it with soap, ash, and “bio-sprays” alone. Plants stopped producing. I had to find a skilled gardener—not just for pruning, but spraying as well.

I don’t like it. But when you buy fruits at the market, they’re sprayed too.

At least in my garden—I know what and who is spraying.

Healing plants with homeopathy isn’t easy.

But I want to try.

There will be mistakes, ineffective prescriptions... but I want to learn.

When you know what real health feels like—when you avoid pharmacies and rely on homeopathy—there’s something painful about watching your trees get sprayed with chemicals four times a year. And then breathing it. And eating it.

I believe my plants deserve to be healthy too.

Don’t you? 😉

September 30, 2022