The hospital where green patients are a good sign

At a bright blue building in Edinburgh, Scotland, patients arrive for consultations, occasionally get quarantined, and sometimes require surgery. But unlike most hospitals, leaving a little greener than you arrived is the whole point.

The Hilda Houseplant Hospital, founded by Rosanna and Tom Costello, helps amateur horticulturalists nurse their struggling indoor plants back to health through services including repotting, pest removal, trimming, cleaning, and liquid drips.

• The hospital is part of the couple’s plant shop Hilda, named after Tom’s great-grandmother, which started as a pop-up before opening a brick-and-mortar location in 2023.
• According to its website, the houseplant hospital is the first of its kind in the UK.

Paging Dr. Plant: Each visit starts with a “patient history,” where customers explain how long they’ve owned their plant, what seems to be wrong, and what they’d like done. 

Rosanna and her team then tailor treatment to both the plant and its home, whether that means splitting it in two, keeping it from growing larger, or quarantining it to deal with pests.

Rosanna knows the struggle firsthand. Hilda’s website describes her as a “reformed plant killer,” and says she originally dreamed up the hospital after wishing there were somewhere she could bring her own plants for hands-on help and advice.

• That experience now comes full circle when customers return to collect their recovering greenery.
• “There’s an awful lot of feelings and emotions attached to the houseplants that we see,” Rosanna said, adding that pickups often bring “so much relief and joy.”

For Rosanna, helping plants thrive can also help their humans. She believes houseplants provide an important connection to nature for people living in cities, particularly those in flats.

She hopes to open another Hilda in a new city, with her only goal being to “help more people to have happy plants.”