Forum home› Plants
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

Are you making plans in case of another dry year?

NormandyLizNormandyLiz Posts: 788
in Plants
One thing in my mind as I dig new beds, plan on planting new trees, decide on other planting, is 'what happens to all this if there is another drought'? Last year I managed to keep the shrubs planted the autumn before alive but there weren't too many. Hopefully this year they will be more established and better able to cope.

I would ideally like a few shrubs in the new beds but I think I'll rely more on annuals in with the veg. I'll already have the new apple trees to nurse and that may be enough if we do have another bad year rain wise. We do, thankfully, have a well but that can only do so much.

Are you making/changing planting plans after the struggle to water last year?
«13456

Posts

  • bédébédé Posts: 3,095
    edited January 2023
    Everything seemed to survive the drought in my garden (rhododendrons, azalea - ev and dec - hydrangeas).  This winter's frosts are another issue).  My major concern was my lawns that went ochre, then sienna, then "dead".  But they came back.  Perhaps with more weeds and more coarse grasses.

    Action:  For drought, no change.  For frost, be more vigilant, wrap things earlier.

    In the end, "survival of the fittest" applies to gardens as well.


     location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
    "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
  • Pete.8Pete.8 Posts: 11,340
    I had 3000 litres of mushroom compost and 1500 litres of horse manure delivered in Oct so will be doing a lot of mulching soon to help with water retention.
    I copost as much as I can, but only get about about 0.5-0.75 cu metre well rotted compost per year from my bins.
    I also bought a 2nd 50m soaker hose to help when really needed.

    Billericay - Essex

    Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
    Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
  • Busy-LizzieBusy-Lizzie Posts: 24,043
    I bought 2 more water butts and I've done a lot of mulching. However, if the water butts have run out and it doesn't rain they won't be much use.
    Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
  • Busy-LizzieBusy-Lizzie Posts: 24,043
    By the way, why are you relying on annuals instead of shrubs? 
    Once shrubs are established they survive drought better than annuals.
    Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
  • WAMSWAMS Posts: 1,960
    Going to purchase an extra butt next month... when I did that last year it promptly stopped raining for months of course
  • NormandyLizNormandyLiz Posts: 788
    Busy-Lizzie said:
    By the way, why are you relying on annuals instead of shrubs? 
    Once shrubs are established they survive drought better than annuals.
    It's in part because I won't feel so bad if they don't make it in a drought (shrubs that are meant to live a long time make me feel worse if they die) and partly because of the kitchen garden approach, which does seem to favour annuals more.
  • Busy-LizzieBusy-Lizzie Posts: 24,043
    When I sold my big family home in Dordogne and bought a smaller house, still in Dordogne, I had a new empty garden to make. My first beds were full of drought resistant plants, such as stachys lanata, echinops, eryngium, nepeta, but then I made new beds with roses, shrubs, foxgloves and hardy perennials - but nothing moisture loving. It did get watered, just enough to kep it going, in the drought. I live in an area with a large river and underground water so not a water crisis area. All my new plants survived. I was pleased and surprised at how they coped. The lawn went beige but recovered when it rained in autumn.
    Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    I will wait until spring to see what has survived and go from there. Shrubs seem ok. The perennials are a concern. Naturally, the weeds like hairy bittercress and PITA like vinca are doing just fine🙄
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • ButtercupdaysButtercupdays Posts: 4,546
    Here in the Cheshire uplands we had much hotter weather than 'normal' (what's that now?) but were spared the sort of drought that was suffered further south. Thanks to retentive soil and some fortuitous rain the grass stayed green and nearly all plants survived, though the veg garden was an exception. Zilch!
    Watering isn't an option here, our water supply is a tank up the hill and when that's empty that's it, no water for anything. So I have lots of water butts and the big pond as absolute last resort. But without expressly trying,  I seem to have been doing the right things because my borders needed less watering than I had feared, even for newly planted dahlias.
    So my plan is to carry on doing the same but even more so. Mulch lots, pack in the plants, so no bare ground to dry out, and choose plants with an eye to drought and heat tolerance, neither of which have really figured before. And mulch again!
  • NormandyLizNormandyLiz Posts: 788
    What I was getting at in the original question was more whether the prospect of hotter, dryer years was making you rethink your planting, to more drought resistant plants for example.

    We went to a talk on the impact of climate change on the French forest by the forestry management (Office National des Forêts) that was, quite frankly, bleak. We are in one of the wetter parts of the country, and the local forest is already starting to show signs of drier summers - beech trees are struggling, bark beetles are making inroads into weakened trees - and their projections for the future range from bad to catastrophic, with the loss entire populations of beech, spruce, etc. 

    So it's make me think about future planting, how much to go with the projected future climatic trends or how much to just stick doing what I would plant otherwise. 
Sign In or Register to comment.