Drought tolerant gardens

Posted by Bill Richardson Jun 27, 2006

While droughts and water shortages are becoming commonplace features in our ever-changing world, many gardeners are wondering which plants will make good choices for their gardens?

There are many plants (including nearly all the native flora) that seem to survive occasional droughts. We can use these in conjunction with many other species to develop quite a nice maintenance free garden, which will survive these dry spells.

Quite a lot of our Australian natives have leaf adaptations and very clever ways to minimise water loss during the dry season.

Before planting it is a good idea to improve the soil's water-holding capacity by adding organic matter such as, leaf mould, compost and organic matter.

Lots of plants tolerate dry shade but they will not necessarily thrive unless you give them a little bit of a head start by providing some better growing conditions where you want to grow them. They will probably flower less and fruit more sparingly.

Eucalypts are one of the best trees to plant in dry areas where there is not a lot of rain or where you have to limit watering. Leaves of a Eucalypt or Gum tree have solved the problem by changing their size.

Transpiration, or loss of water through the pores of the leaves is reduced because the leaves hang vertically and avoid the sun in the hottest part of the day. Even the light, silvery colour reflects sunlight and helps keep the leaves cool. These species do survive in areas with poor soil and minimal water supplies and they are well adapted to their conditions; they still manage to gather and transpire about 240 litres of water every day.

Plants that perform well under dry conditions include many localised natives which are endemic to that particular area and have evolved over centuries and adapted to local conditions. When you first plant them out in your garden, they will need a little watering for the first couple of dry seasons, to get them established, after this you can pretty well leave them to it.

What you might need to do for a water restricted garden is to place some tough trees around to assure a measure of shade, like some of our Eucalypts.

Read my latest article Grevilleas for our Gardens