Ideas for drought-tolerant planting

Including plant profiles on Cistus and Helianthemum

Iris ‘Strathmore’

An aside

I want to start this week by telling you a story that made me smile - and it also made me reflect on the important role plants have as memory-keepers. I posted a video of the Benton irises that were given to me as offsets by Dan Pearson and Huw Morgan, including a very pale apricot variety called Strathmore. A few hours later someone posted back:

‘Thank you for helping to solve a family mystery. When my late Grandmother went into care, we couldn’t leave her beloved irises behind. We knew she had bought them from Beth Chatto Gardens many moons ago, but no labels remained. In your video, you mention the Benton Iris ‘Strathmore’. My childhood home was called Strathmore, and now we know not only this iris’s name but probably why my Grandmother chose to buy it. Her love of irises led me to name my daughter after the flower she loved so much. Thank you!’

Plants and flowers can be so evocative, a living reminder of loved ones no longer with us. I have a clereodendron in my garden that came from my mother, who in turn got it from my grandmother, and I love it dearly for this reason. I also treasure a couple of roses given to me by my mother-in-law, who is sadly not with us any more, and each time they flower (always prolifically) I think of her. She also gave me a rather thuggish helianthus that however hard I try, I can’t get rid of! She is there, in my garden, making me smile.

This leads me to reflect on which plant I might be remembered for in years to come and I wonder whether it might be the hollyhock, which has made itself very much at home in this garden, and is now spreading through the village as I distribute seeds to anyone who wants them. I think I’d really like to be a modern day Ellen Willmott, who was known for secretly scattering seeds of a particular sea holly round any garden she happened to be visiting - the variety now known as ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghost.’ She’d be known as a ‘guerilla gardener’ nowadays I guess, but I love this idea of making things grow in unexpected places. Watch out for the crazy woman throwing handfuls of poppy and hollyhock seeds out of the car window onto motorway verges.

Cistus x argenteus ‘Silver Pink’ and Oenothera odorata ‘Apricot Delight’ photographed in Sarah Price’s garden

Drought-tolerant plants

Anyway - onwards to more pressing matters: how to cope with the current drought. I’ve been thinking about introducing more drought-tolerant plants into my borders here, but I’m fully aware that even though there may be a drought at the moment, in a few months’ time the likelihood is we will be in a prolonged deluge, so we need to find plants that will tolerate both extremes. Often, the answer is excellent drainage. If you are gardening in gravel, or on a sandy, free-draining soil, then you’ll be fine with cistus, lavenders, santolinas and other Mediterranean plants. If you have a slow-draining, heavy clay soil, forget about it and try some of the prairie species such as Rudbeckia, Echinacea or Silphium, that will tolerate both wet and dry conditions.