Planting in Dry Weather

Obviously here at Weather It we’re used to working in a bit of heat – all that metal doesn’t weld itself after all – but honestly, can we just dial down a bit now please?

And if we’re suffering, one look at our parched gardens will tell us they are having a tough time too, but as hosepipe bans start to be put in place, keeping plants alive, let alone thriving, is set to become even more difficult.

Since I know next to nothing about how we go about addressing the problem, I asked Amanda to write this blog and offer us a bit of hope.

There’s no easy way to put this but, like it or not, these kind of summers are going to become the norm and we are going to have to change the way we garden – especially in the south and east of the country.

The lush green lawns and abundant flower borders so central to our collective image of a ‘typical British garden’, have long seemed an anachronism to me; beautiful as they are, they are hungry, thirsty and labour intensive. The move towards a more naturalistic style in recent years has been more suited to our lifestyles perhaps, but not, I fear, to a changing climate.

I live in London where the heat has been particularly intense, and where we’ve had very little rain all year – in fact the last time we had any significant rain was, typically, during the Chelsea Flower Show week – and my mostly naturalistic garden is now on its knees.

Which is ironic, because at the RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival last year, the whole point of my ‘Punk Rockery’ garden was to show that, not only could everyone have a beautiful, thriving garden, but that it was possible to make it highly resilient, drought tolerant, and planet-friendly too.

Yet did I heed my own advice when I re-designed and planted my garden back in 2019? Nope. Am I now regretting it? You bet.

For the last three years there are parts of the garden I’ve had to start watering in early spring, something I was loathe to do, but was necessary with still-young plants in the ground; this year I just can’t keep up so have decided to leave it to its own devices – if a plant dies then I will remove it and never plant it again; if a plant survives, then it has earned its place and I’ll use it more.

In effect this will turn the larger part of the garden over to Mediterranean and other hot, dry climate (think California, South Africa and Australia) planting; something I believe we’ll all have to adapt to over the coming years.

But there’s no need to despair. Mediterranean gardens are some of the most beautiful and enchanting I have ever seen, and there are plenty of examples here in the UK to show us the way – Beth Chatto’s gravel garden and Dan Pearson’s ‘Delos’ garden at Sissinghurst being just two.

But it won’t be easy to shake off a gardening tradition that goes back many years and is firmly rooted in our psyches.

Aesthetically we’ll have to ween ourselves off the greeness of our gardens and embrace more silvers, blues and dark evergreens; we’ll have to say bye-bye to some of our most-beloved leafy plants and those with delicate blooms, or at least adapt to growing them in containers where they can be mollycoddled. And, perhaps toughest of all, we’ll have accept that many Mediterranean plants go dormant in high summer (to protect themselves from the searing heat) meaning our gardens will be at their best only in spring and maybe again in autumn.

Happily, we can also start taking a more hands-off approach with little-to-no feeding, watering, or weeding, or the need to endlessly improve our soils with manure and compost; we can look forward to a plentiful supply of herbs like sage, rosemary and thyme, and rejoice in a garden that is heady with fragrance and alive with bees & butterflies.

What’s not to like? Let’s get cracking!

How to create the right environment:

Needless to say most Mediterranean plants have adapted to grow in full sun and poor soil so don’t plant them in shady, damp conditions.

Drought-tolerant plants tend to be deep rooted, so they’ll need to be able to get their roots through the soil. At Hampton Court the plants were shown growing in very poor soil and a deep mulch of rubble, brick and other mineral waste; this mimicks their often rocky, seemingly inhospitable natural environment, so loosen up the soil where necessary and add gravel, sand or other stony material; alternatively lay a thick (15cm plus) gravel layer and plant in to that.

Conversely, dry-climate plants can take a sudden deluge of water, and even be temporarily flooded, as long as the water drains away quickly, so if you have clay soil, try mounding up freer draining soil with rocks or boulders in a contemporary take on a rockery and planting into that.

Key plants to try:

• Agapanthus
• Artemisia
• Cistus
• Erigeron
• Eryngium
• Gaura
• Herbs – sage, tarragon, thyme, fennel, oregano etc
• Lavender – particularly French varieties
• Phillyrea
• Phlomis
• Potentilla
• Stachys
• Salvia
• Santolina
• Teucrium
• Verbascum

Dry and Mediterranean-style gardens to visit:

• Delos at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent
• Beth Chatto Gardens, Essex
• Sheffield Botanical Gardens, South Yorks
• RHS Hyde Hall, Essex
  RHS Wisley, Surrey
• Eden Project, Cornwall
• Ventnor Botanic Garden, Isle of Wight
• Mount Stewart, County Down

Books & resources:

Bringing the Mediterranean to Your Garden and Planting Design for Dry Gardens both Olivier Filippi

Drought Resistant Planting: Lessons from Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden, Beth Chatto & Steven Wooster

Amanda Grimes is a Garden & Planting Designer. Find her at sparkgardens.co.uk and on Instagram @spark.garden.design