How to create a drought-resistant Garden in Sutton, Surrey

What to Plant and Do This Autumn

This summer’s dry weather has highlighted which parts of our gardens are the most vulnerable.

Here’s how you can use this year’s hot weather to create a more drought-resilient garden for the future.

A drought can be an eye opening experience for a gardener.

Garden Lawns turn brown. Containers collapse. Young trees start to look stressed and your once attractive and familiar garden borders suddenly reveal how much water they actually need.

A severe dry summer is also an unusually good test of your garden.

It helps to tell you exactly which plants can cope in the heat, which areas dry out first and where your garden is most dependent on regular watering. That knowledge is invaluable.

Rather than simply trying to fix the damage when the rain returns, use this summer to create a more drought-resilient garden for the future.

Don’t rush to clear the garden when all the rain returns.

When proper rainfall finally arrives, do not immediately cut everything back, dig the borders and replace every brown plant that has died. Give your garden time to recover.

Some plants will respond surprisingly quickly. Others may need weeks or even months to recover.

  • Watch for new plant and shrub growth.
  • Check young trees.
  • See which shrubs recover.
  • Look at your Garden lawn.

Only then start deciding what has genuinely died. This can prevent plants that are in recovery from being dug out and removed.

Start with the soil

If you want your garden to cope better with dry summers, soil is one of the best places to begin.

Healthy soil has a remarkable ability to hold, retain and release moisture as and when needed.

The aim is not simply to make your mud and soil wet.

It is also to improve its bosy and structure, so that it can retain moisture while still allowing excess water to drain away.

That very much matters in the UK because we experience both weather extremes.

One year there is a prolonged dry summer.

Another year, can bring saturated winter soils and torrential rainfall. Even flooding.

Good soil management helps your garden cope with both.

Add compost

Once conditions become suitable, improve your garden borders with well-made organic matter such as garden compost.

This can improve the body of your soil structure and increase its capacity to hold moisture.

Don’t think of soil improvement as a one-off job.

Adding compost gradually over several seasons is often more useful than trying to transform an entire garden in a few days.

Do not rely on fertiliser as a substitute for good soil.

Fertiliser supplies nutrients to your plants and shrubs.

Compost improves the growing.

They are not the same thing.

Make mulch part of your normal gardening routine

Mulching is one of the simplest ways to retain moisture.

An organic mulch can:

  • Reduce water evaporation
  • Keep soil cooler
  • Suppress weeds
  • Reduce competition for moisture

Garden compost, leaves mould, composted bark and other appropriate organic matter can all do the job.

Apply a suitable layer once the soil is moist and conditions are appropriate for doing so.

And always leave a gap around stems and tree trunks.

Choose plants for your actual garden

The phrase “drought tolerant” is in my opinion, often misleading.

A plant may cope brilliantly with hot, dry weather in one location and yet struggle to survive in another.

Why?

Because surviving during a drought isn’t the only factor.

You also need to consider:

  • Soil type
  • Garden drainage
  • Sunlight exposure
  • Wet Winter
  • Available space
  • Competition from nearby plants

A plant that loves dry, sunny soil may be a poor choice for a heavy, poorly drained Sutton border.

Right plant in the right place, remains one of the oldest and best pieces of gardening advice.

Plants worth considering for sunny, well-drained areas.

For suitable sites, drought-tolerant planting can include:

  • Lavender
  • Salvia
  • Nepeta
  • Hylotelephium and other sedums
  • Stipa grasses
  • Rosemary
  • Thyme
  • Some euphorbias
  • Agapanthus
  • Suitable hardy ornamental grasses

Do not simply create a Mediterranean garden because the summer was hot. South London also has winters every year, and some can be harsh.

Some plants that can adapted to hot, dry summers dislike cold, wet roots.

Therefore, your winter soil conditions matter just as much as your summer temperatures.

Keep your established trees and shrubs

A dry summer can make mature plants look surprisingly unhappy. Do not just think that they need replacing.

Established trees and shrubs generally have much larger root systems than newly planted and can be considerably more resilient.

Young trees are the plants that deserve particular attention.

Mature trees surrounded by paving, growing in restricted planting areas or competing with other garden vegetation may also need your closer inspection.

Use the summer drought to identify your garden’s hot spots and walk around your garden to make a mental map of these areas.

Where did plants suffer first?

  • Was it beside the south-facing wall?
  • Under the west-facing fence?
  • Beneath a tree?
  • In the paved courtyard?
  • Against or beside the house?

These are likely your drought hot spots. When redesigning your garden, do not fight the conditions.

Choose planting that suits them.

As a plant that naturally enjoys dry, sunny conditions is a much better choice for a hot border area than one that needs consistently moist soil.

Make better use of rainwater

A drought should also change the way we think about rainfall. When it finally rains, try to capture it.

Water butts are an obvious answer.

Make sure gutters and downpipes are clear and direct rainfall into water storage where possible.

Keep stored water secure and covered appropriately.

The idea is straightforward:

Don’t let useful rain disappear down the drain if you can safely capture and store it in a water butt.

Remember the first substantial rainfall after a drought may not immediately rehydrate your garden soil.

Very dry soil can initially repel the water, while intense rainfall can run off rather than penetrate it deeply.

Give your garden soil time.

Think about how much garden lawn you actually need.

A Garden lawn provides much needed space for children, seating, recreation and of course much needed wildlife.

But if a large garden lawn repeatedly becomes a flooded problem, ask whether every square metre needs to remain grass.

You could reduce its size and introduce:

  • Drought resistant borders
  • Groundcover
  • Gravel planting
  • Wildlife-friendly areas
  • Low-growing plants suited to dry conditions

The answer does not have to be “remove the garden lawn”. Or it might simply be “have less of a garden lawn”.

Think carefully about your plant containers

The summer drought may also highlight vulnerable weaknesses in your container gardening.

Small pots dry out quickly.

Terracotta can become extremely hot.

Hanging baskets have limited compost.

If you regularly struggle to keep plants alive in small pots, consider consolidating your garden plants.

Larger containers generally provide a greater reservoir of moisture.

Grouping pots together can also create a slightly more sheltered environment.

Design for wildlife as well as drought

In fact, the two objectives can work together.

  • Choose plants that provide nectar.
  • Leave some seed heads.
  • Keep a shallow source of clean water.
  • Provide shelter.

Avoid cutting your garden back unnecessarily.

A garden that retains vegetation, flowers and well-planned planting can provide valuable resources for insects and birds.

Remember what the drought taught you

This is something I would strongly recommend and before you forget what happened, write it down.

  • Which plants needed watering the most?
  • Which plants survived best without it?
  • Which garden borders dried first?
  • Which garden containers became impossible to look after?
  • Which young trees struggled to survive?
  • Which plants seemed completely unfazed by the lack of water/rain?

This is a useful list of your drought-tolerant plants and shrubs in the future. And you are creating a list of what works in your garden in the future.

The next time that the weather conditions become too dry, you will know where best to focus all your efforts. And where not.

Autumn is the opportunity to look ahead.

Once the soil is moist and workable, autumn can be the best time to make changes to your garden.

Consider:

  • Improving your garden soil with anything organic
  • Mulching borders
  • Planting suitable trees and shrubs
  • Reducing vulnerable garden lawn areas
  • Installing additional water storage
  • Moving plants to more suitable positions
  • Redesigning consistently dry garden borders

Trees, shrubs and many perennials planted in autumn have time to establish roots before the following summer and possible intense heat.

That can give your plants/shrubs a much better start than planting into hot, dry conditions.

Do not try to build a perfect drought-proof garden, as a garden will always need water.

The objective is to try and achieve some resistance and resilience to the harsher conditions.

You want a garden in which the garden plants are suited to their conditions, the garden soil can retain moisture, rainwater is captured, bare soil is minimised and your most vulnerable and easily exposed plants are easy to identify.

The ideal Sutton garden in the future may look slightly different from the traditional British garden.

  • It might have a less thirsty garden lawn.
  • More carefully chosen planting.
  • Better garden soil.
  • More mulch.
  • More rainwater storage.

And fewer plants that require constant intervention and garden input to survive.

This recent drought has given us useful information and future guidance.

The dry summer may have been very difficult, but it has also provided everyone that gardeners rarely get to see so clearly – a gardening stress test.

  • It has shown you what works in your garden
  • It has shown you what doesn’t work in your garden
  • It has shown you where water disappears.
  • And it has shown you which plants are able to deal with the weather

Use this information, just as we do at Hollyoak Gardening Ltd.

When the rainfall returns, do not simply try to recreate the garden exactly as it was before.

Build on what you’ve learnt from your experience, as that is exactly what we do at Hollyoak Gardening Ltd.

A genuinely drought-resilient Sutton garden won’t be the one that stays perfectly green throughout every dry Summer spell.

It will be the garden that continues to thrive and grow, whilst needing far less intervention to do so.