Meet Hortense

A few years ago, somebody abandoned a hydrangea on the Underground.

It was handed in as lost property, which already raises several important questions about the sort of day someone must have been having. Nobody ever came to collect it, and eventually the lost property office told us to throw it in the bin because it was considered “perishable”.

Reader, we absolutely did not throw her in the bin.

Instead, the station staff decided to keep her alive, and somehow we all became emotionally invested in the wellbeing of an abandoned hydrangea. She now lives in the station kitchen, where she continues to survive against all odds and receives far better care than some parts of the transport network.

Her name is Hortense, purely because it starts with an H and sounded suitably dignified for a rescued railway plant.