How I Saved My Olive Tree.
The grow-light solution I'm quite proud of.
For years I had a beautiful, towering olive tree in an antique stone planter in the corner of our living room. It was a Shady Lady — the kind that grows tall and a little wild, with delicate leaves that I love. When we plastered our walls last year, there was dust everywhere during construction and, even though the tree was covered, it didn't survive.
I was genuinely devastated, which sounds dramatic for a houseplant until you’ve spent years looking at and caring for the family tree. I searched every nursery in Utah and came up empty — nothing close to the right size, the right shape, the right anything. Then I was in California for our summer shoot and spotted one in the front window of a shop, almost by accident. The only catch was figuring out how to get it home, and our McGee & Co. moving truck was already full. So I called a friend who lives nearby, gave her a couple of Triby chairs to clear the space (a fair trade, in my opinion), and we drove the tree back to Utah.
It dropped almost every leaf within two weeks. I panicked, did the kind of late-night research only someone emotionally invested in a tree would do, and ordered this ugly grow light on Amazon. It was not cute, but it worked. New leaves started coming in within a few weeks, and I realized that between our grey Utah winters and the corner of the room being a touch too far from a window, the new tree was going to need more light to thrive in our home.
Here’s the solution I’m quite proud of: