DROUGHT BUSTERS
We’ve had another unusually dry April, but some plants don’t just survive in arid conditions – they thrive in them
THIS spring I revamped my Dry Garden. This was not a transformation or makeover but more of a fine-tuning in light of both its specific short-comings and the general trend that climate change is undoubtedly bringing to our weather.
The last three Aprils have been gloriously dry, and this year, following the driest winter I can remember for a very long time, the ground is absolutely parched.
The best way to deal with drought in any garden is to choose plants that have adapted to it. By and large, these come from what in horticultural terms is the Mediterranean region which, as well as the area around the Mediterranean sea, includes South Africa, Australia, California and Chile. This gives a wide range of plants that will thrive in any amount of heat and drought we’re likely to experience here.
My own Dry Garden is the one area of the whole garden that does not have clay soil. In fact, when I made it in 2004, it had no soil at all, being Tarmac laid directly over sandstone.
I lifted the Tarmac, hacked out a few inches of the sandstone and brought in topsoil from elsewhere in the garden. It is south facing and the warmest, most sheltered part of the plot.
You may think this is an inauspicious place to make a garden but cardoons, irises, fennel, tansy, cistus, rosemary and lavender have all made themselves thoroughly at home — even when the temperatures dropped to as low as -10°C. But the combination of wet and cold is disastrous for all Mediterranean plants.
Recently, however, certain plants — primarily fennel and tansy — had become thugs and were crowding out their more delicate neighbours. So this spring we lifted everything, weeded as best we could and had a rethink.
This was partly a result of the gradual invasion by the thugs, but also because I had access to a pile of blocks of sandstone and had wondered for years how best to use them. Inspired by numerous trips to Greece, where I have been helping to make a garden for a friend over the past decade, I decided to use them in this part of the plot so they look like the remnants of former walls and buildings.
This involved a lot of heaving and waddling along with a sack truck for much of the Easter weekend, but I got there. Then I replanted around the stones.
I have put back the rosemary and lavender that is so suited to these conditions, adding sedums, Euphorbia characias wulfenii, E. mellifera, many bearded irises that were hidden in the thickets of tansy and fennel, and, most dramatically of all, a large olive tree that had hitherto lived in a pot in the Paradise Garden. I watered everything in well but shall not water again. Ever. If it is to be a Dry garden, it must cope with drought. I have every faith, however, that it will be fine and that the biggest threat is from too much rain, rather than too little.
The moral of the story is that while climate change may be the greatest threat to mankind in our history, in the short term, at least for gardeners, it is a challenge that can create beautiful and fascinating planting opportunities.
Next week I’m off to the Chelsea Flower Show. Last year it was held in September and, despite this, it was a great success as it managed to be both reassuringly itself and yet, because of the time of year, refreshingly different – especially in the palette of plants on display. But to be going back there at this more familiar season does feel like a homecoming.