East Anglia is classed as semi-arid, with 70cm of rain per annum (in a good year, which the last few have not been). The driest part of the UK plus lean, sandy soil (but flat, open and sunny), I know about drought and, with an allotment hosepipe ban, am slowly, but surely turning my entire plot into a no-water dry garden. Although our gardens are likely to be very different, Melissa, I suspect we are enduring the same doubts and frustrations...not least because we are not those lithe and sprightly striplings, able to work entire days, trudging up and down with barrows, buckets and busy spades.
This time of the year, even when hosepipes were allowed, has always been challenging, but I now have to accept that geums, asters, thalictrum, hemerocallis, veronicastrum, heleniums and even hardy geraniums are not possible anymore .I have grown less and less fruit and vegetables (cos I am a reluctant cook after 5 decades of family meals). So many wild plans and whims have fallen by the wayside - always shocking to read of this or that plant and think, 'hmmm, I had that, wonder what happened to it'.
There are some (fleeting) times of the year when the garden is breathtakingly lovely .
Spring bulbs are stellar and reliably perennial - species tulips, anemone coronaria, primula, camassias, lathyrus , hellebores et al, are glorious but O, when June slips into July, the garden is a sorry state indeed. The once blooming roses (which would be more or less all of them) have done their thing, along with philadelphus, rosemary and cistus, leaving the shrubby salvias and catmints to keep going through till September. Of course, the weeds have no reticence...exploding with exponential growth but here's a brief list of plants I either have already (and are doing well) or those I am planning to start over the next few years.
Anything with a robust storage system - tubers, taproots, corms...so dierama, iris, platycodon, callirhoe, habranthus, some ipomeas, baptisia and althea cannabina. eryngiums and echinops.
Silvery foliage or tomentose leafage...some salvias, phlomis, convolvulous cneorum, anthemis, artemisia, lavender, buddleja
Plants which slip into semi-dormancy, returning with autumn rains - a number of SA daisies such as osteospermum, gazania, felicia, convolulous mauritanicus
Plants which can keep their stomata open during night (known as CAM plants) Sedums, kalanchoe, opuntia and crassula can transpire with minimal water loss.
Plants which tend to have minimal foliage and grow low to the ground - zauschneria, antennaria, hedysarum, some euphorbia, phuopsis, talinums, thymes, gypsophila.
Grasses (some): Once again, I am attempting various meadow schemas, along with my beloved umbellifers and stipa, panicum, muhlenbergia, eragrostis, sporobolis, although I am a bit ambivalent since brome grasses and couch grass are persistent allotment weeds so I worry about the wrong grasses getting into the grasses (iyswim).
It is all a bit experimental, with an emphasis on pollinators and wildlife but I really have no option but to embrace waterwise gardening. I will say that roses tend to do reasonably well...especially the once flowering wildlings such as the early Chinese yellows and the charming pimpinellifolias. I can live without summer roses because autumn brings heps and haws.
So, I have cut back the meadows (I can do either spring flowers (cowslips, anemones, narcissus, meadow rue and ox-eyes)...or later summer flowers (scabious, knapweeds, heliopsis, achilleas). I cannot have both. Holding my nerve with a Chelsea chop on the perennials and hoping for autumn sages, sedums and bulbs such as watsonia, zephyranthes, homeria, rhodohypoxis and species gladioli (such as the ineffably lovely ruby papillio).
We must to adapt and learn resilience. And hope.
Q