Will we have to choose different plants for hotter, drier summers?

The only spot-watering my garden has seen in recent months was done by the builder in a quiet moment. I hadn’t asked him to, but I think he saw the state of things and took pity on an acer I’d given up on. I explained I’d been using the drought as an, admittedly extreme, experiment to find which plants are resilient to multiple heatwaves, but said he was welcome to take the acer back to his well-irrigated garden.

My observations are that the roses hung in there. Not flowering, as I’ve seen others doing, but mine are probably younger. The wildflower meadow has been surprisingly floriferous; it’s been a good year for zinnias – although not good enough to make me like them. The volunteer buddleja that was hacked to the ground in April made an Oasis-worthy comeback. Euphorbias, meconopsis, sage, erigeron: all fine. Volunteer robinia saplings loved life. Verbascum coped. My son has been eating passion fruit straight from the vine.

The reason so many of us find gardening relaxing, I think, is because it is one of the ultimate acts of observation. Consider every time you embark on a spontaneous tour of the garden with a friend or family member, how nice it is to potter about pointing things out or discussing how something is growing. This summer has been brutal for many reasons, but ignoring the wake-up call for changing how we grow things is daft. The English garden needs to be one that can survive two months without rain, just as much as flash flooding.

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Garden designer and author Jack Wallington has collected responses from others who have been watching their gardens dessicate with a mixture of horror and fascination. Over on his newsletter, Wild Way, he’s collated a list of truly drought-tolerant plants from their feedback. What’s notable is how many of them are traditional cottage garden plants: honeysuckle, roses, hollyhocks and ferns, peonies, geraniums and ivy. If you still want to go cottagecore, you can.

But what’s perhaps more interesting is all the other plants you may not have previously considered, which are thriving. California poppies for colour hits, Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ – a particularly beautiful grass that I’ve grown in part-shade as well as full sun – for perennial structure and texture. Gaura lindheimeri and ‘Whirling butterflies’, which I find endlessly pretty, and even hydrangeas (notorious moisture-suckers), which I saw looking fantastic in a friend’s garden recently.

September marks the start of the planting season. Before choosing plants for your garden, it’s best to consider how much water they’re really going to need.

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