Question
Hello, how are you going? Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. My name is Christina and I live in Australia. I have a hydrangea plant that I love, and it had beautiful flowers, but my sister whos job it is to water the pot plants daily, has got schizophrenia, as my Mum thought that getting her to water the pot plants would be good therapy for her as she doesn't work because of her illness. But she didn't water them, who knows what she did when she goes out there with the watering can, and now I just found out that my beautiful hydrangea is now just a grey stump. My Mum says that its dead and that it has been just a grey stump for ages. Is there any way I can save my beautiful plant? It has no flowers and no leaves now and it is about 12cm high only now and it is just branches that are grey and nothing at all looks green on it, even when I snap a branch it is not green inside. I love my little plant. Thanks heaps for your time, I do appreciate it a lot. Kind Regards, from Christina

Answer
Well, if you were in the "states", I would guess that your Hydrangea was still dormant. But, you are down under and your plant should be in full leaf and flower at this part of your season. Because the hydrangea needs lots of water, hence the hydro part of the name, I would say that your sister was not filling it's quota. I think it is a fine idea to get her interested in taking care of the plants, but perhaps she needs to have easy care plants to start, and you could check the plants to see that they are thriving.
Some easy plants might be:
Pothos
Sansevieria (snake plant)
Spider plant
Begonia
Dracaena
to name a few.