The essential list: plants which will survive everything the weather throws at them

And we revisit the slug issue

Jul 20, 2024

∙ Paid

As it has lots of images, this post may be too long for email so please do have a look at it in your browser/app instead

Hello Sunshine

What a difference a bit of warmth makes. However we might be feeling, the light and the heat remind us that it’s time to get outside. The bees are starting to emerge, and the garden is starting to feel lived in again as a general feeling of movement makes its way in a slow ripple through the borders.

It’s pretty hard to beat the simple luxury of standing, on a warm summer’s evening, in amongst the buddleias, waiting for a buzz:

What’s in store this week

Super-resilient plants that will stand all the extremes our weather throws at them
Veg patch successes: the slug problem FOILED - for now
A new Zoom date

We do ask a lot of our gardens, don’t we?

We want them looking good from May-October.

We want herbaceous plants to survive both the wet, soggy winters and also the searing heat which even over just a couple of days can mean the end for some less resilient plants.

As I say, we ask a lot.

pink flowers in a gravel garden — What’s doing well in the garden this week

After two days of heat in the UK, it’s around about now that the ‘Mediterranean garden’ articles will start appearing online and in the papers, telling us to adjust our planting and to turn our gardens into places which look like they belong in parched sunnier climes.

And there’s the contradiction

It’s vital that we remember that UK gardens also have to tolerate below freezing temperatures and endless (I mean ENDLESS) rain. So a lot of the plants that are often suggested in these lists simply won’t cut it in the UK. And I know many of our US Gardening Minds have been having the same issue.

Today I’m putting out a call for plants which you’ve seen surviving both heat and wet, plants which have been in your garden for at least two years and which tolerate these extremes. Plants that will cope not just with the hot and dry summer that we had last year and the year before, but which will also happily get through a cold and wet winter.

This is going to be a super-helpful resource for us all, so do let us know where you garden, and what your best dry-wet, cold-hot performers are. I know many have had barely any sun at all, so this is going to be an interesting challenge.

I also know that writing about heat is some kind of rain dance in itself - sorry….

Thanking you in advance, Gardening Minds!