Drought tolerant plants 2025

 I think the drought in 2025 also caused me to dry up on blog writing! I only watered crops, like tomatoes which I grew in hanging baskets.  However, I was impressed by how quite a few plants in my garden thrived.  Here are some of them.

Salvia Clotted Cream'.  A wonderful shrubby salvia which flowered for months on end.  Behind it are aka Hylotelephium  'Autumn Joy'(red), Geranium 'Rozanne'(blue) and Nicotiana 'Whispers' (shades of pink).



Symphyotrichum 'Andenken an Alma Potschke'.  Last autumn this 100cm tall aster flowered particularly well.















One of the most amazing successes last year was this half hardy annual,  Nicotiana 'Whispers Mixed'.  I followed the instructions on the seed packet, and the resulting plants flowered from summer to autumn.  Some of the plants survived the winter so now I'm waiting to see if they'll flower again and become a perennial.













This photo was taken at a wildlife patch that Southbourne Environment Group is developing on a triangle of parish land at the far end of the recreation ground in Southbourne.  There's no water up there and substrate is free draining compacted rubble so it shows how drought resistant sedums can be!  This is the commonly grown Hylotelephium spectabile 'Autumn Joy', donated as a bare rooted plant as was the Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm' in the background, also thriving in the drought.  






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Splitting Calathea 'triostar' - an Easter Monday project.

Image
 I bought the original plant from an EHS plant sale - I can't remember how long ago - and it cost me £4.  What great value it's been.  I think it only had 4 leaves, and now, at least four years later, there are four 'shoots' in the pot each with five or six leaves.   Calathea triostar before it was split. It was in its original 1.5 litre pot, so I decided to use the same size pot for the separated plants.  I chose Melcourt Sylvagrow peat-free multi-purpose compost to plant them in, my current favourite.  The plant came cleanly out of its pot.  Each shoot comes from a rhizome, so to separate the shoots the rhizome has to be broken.  I did this by gently breaking them apart (you could cut them). The four transplanted shoots were watered and are now recovering in the (empty) bath, where it is well lit but not directly.  It's an ideal place for them but not very practical in the long run.  Calathea does best in warm humid conditions....
Read more

Aeoniums

Image
 Aeoniums are fascinating succulent plants.  A few years ago I was given one, and since then it's gone through a number of different forms.  The most recent was quite unpredictable. Six months ago I had two plants they weren't doing much.  I transplanted them in fresh compost in bigger pots, as a friend suggested.  In retrospect I should have used a much grittier growing medium, but nevertheless one plant thrived, shown below, and the other didn't.     I cut the stem of the less vigorous one in half and planted the top half.  The top isn't growing, but the stem of the bottom half has produced lots of little rosettes.   What will happen next?  Will all the rosettes grow out of the stem?  I'll keep you posted.
Read more

Daphnes

Image
 It's a pity that scent can't be captured online because it's a stunning feature of most Daphnes.  The first one I encountered was at what is now the Sir Harold Hillier Garden near Romsey on an EHS trip!  Our guide told  that the scent of Daphne bholua  'Jacqueline Postill' would blow our socks off and so it did.  Here's my mine,  in full flower after first coming into flower in December. A lower growing, bushy variety in my front garden, is Daphne odora aureomarginata.    It has spread a lot, and though the books say they shouldn't be pruned, it'll have to be as it's overgrowing other plants.  When it was new and small it was tramped on by builders who stuck together with blue plastic tape, so hopefully it'll survive another chop. Not all Daphnes have a strong scent.  Daphne laureola forms a low growing rounded bush with green lightly scented flowers.  It is a woodland plant, growing wild in Southern England and flowering thr...
Read more