Which plants will survive and can I use grey water? Gardening as UK summers get drier

As parts of Beth Chatto’s visionary drought-tolerant gardens in Essex turn brown, the head gardener offers advice Her debut book, in 1978, was titled The Dry Garden. After that, the late Beth Chatto created a rich legacy with her expertise as a plantswoman and by setting up one of the oldest unwatered public gardens in England. Once a car park but transformed in 1992 into an experiment to test what plants were drought-tolerant in Essex, the driest county in the UK, Chatto’s gravel gardens south of Clacton are being visibly tested this year. Desiccated and brown foliage carpets are a sorry sight in parts of the gardens greeting visitors familiar with bursts of Mediterranean colour in rockeries and beds. Dry, cracked soil, stunted growth and dead or dying plants are familiar to everyone in northern Europe this harsh summer, and particularly in southern England, where there has been zero or low rainfall since the middle of June. But what lessons are being learned that can help gardeners respond as the UK suffers worsening climate crisis-driven heatwaves each summer? First, says the head gardener at Beth Chatto Gardens, Malin Andersson, observe what is going on. Stunted growth, lack of