Late summer in an Essex garden

Rose ‘The Generous Gardener’ with a flower crab spider lying in wait

In the UK, East Anglia has the least rainfall, with Shoeburyness in Essex the driest town in the country.

Essex is also among the top sunniest places, which means being able to enjoy sitting outside in your garden eating lunch, reading a book, entertaining friends or simply sunbathing is much easier here than in wetter, colder parts of the UK.

But the lack of rainfall can cause difficulties for gardens. Beautiful, traditional garden planting you might admire in Devon will struggle in Essex without costly regular irrigation.

Famous Essex plantswoman, the late Beth Chatto, was part of a new wave of gardeners who wanted to garden in a different way. This was partly because she knew her local climate well and realised usual garden planting was going to be difficult, if not nigh on impossible to achieve, on the soil where she and her husband Andrew decided to build their new home.

Even though a stream coursed in a dip in front of the new house, the ground level on which the house was built was extremely sandy and couldn’t hold moisture for long. And so she created her famous gravel garden, showcasing the plants that cope well to this day with an East Anglian summer

Scabiosa columbaria subsp. ochroleuca is a mid height perennial which flowers for a long period through mid to late summer

I worked as a gardener at Beth Chatto’s from 2012 to 2023, and experienced drought in 2018 and 2022, as well as the soaring temperatures that Beth never witnessed.

I learned important lessons that are helpful for coping with drought and how plants perform during water stress.

There are two options for periods of dry weather. The first is to install an irrigation system. This can be costly depending on its visibility, and there are also ongoing maintenance costs, not to mention water bills.

The second, which as an advocate of Beth’s approach I much prefer, is to know which plants cope well with Essex summers. Below, is a list of 5 plants, not necessarily typical gravel garden plants, but which are particularly resistant to dry periods.

Scabiosa columbaria subsp. ochroleuca

This is a very pretty type of pale-yellow scabious with many branches that produce an abundance of small flowers. They are attractive in bud and as seedheads too. It flowers from July to September, and bees and butterflies will enjoy it as much as you do. During the drought in 2022 it was one of the few plants at Beth’s that was unfazed by the dry and the heat. For full sun in some clay soils, average and sandy soils, but avoid soggy winter wet ones.

Calamintha nepeta subsp. nepeta

This flowering plant blooms from midsummer all the way to autumn. There are other calaminthas, notably C. ’Blue Cloud’, but this lesser calamint is extremely well behaved and long flowering. It is less likely to sprawl and flop, and doesn’t seed everywhere like C. ‘Blue Cloud’. It has pales blue-white flowers that start off slowly and scattered across the plant, but crescendo to full-on froof, making a lovely counterfoil to more structural plants. It’s also covered in bees, hoverflies and small butterflies. One for full sun or some shade in a sandy or average soil.

Amsonia ‘Ernst Pagels’

This lovely perennial has it all – a graceful shape, pretty starry blue flowers, and the leaves turn a great colour in autumn too. It’s a hybrid, and although its parents tend to need some moisture, this is one tough cookie that withstands intermittent drought and heat.

Polystichum setiferum

An evergreen fern, known as the soft shield fern. As it unfurls in late spring, the leaflets look like little pearls. Once it’s established in a shady location, it can tolerate a remarkable amount of dry. There are lots of subspecies with different shapes and heights, and they all seem to be tough cookies. The polystichums in the woodland at Beth Chatto’s were some of the few plants that remained green during the drought in 2022. Suits any soil in shade, but benefits from a good organic mulch.

Roses – almost any!

I try and plant for insects as well as people, so tend to favour single, open-flowered roses over double-flowered ones, though sometimes this can be quite hard when you fall in love with a particular cultivar. We have a R. ‘Generous Gardener growing on our house. The scent is lovely, the shape and colour are very pretty, and it provides big orange hips in the winter too. Although it’s a double-flowered rose, bees are able to access the nectar once the flowers are fully open. However, where there are plants unable to provide nectar, I always think it’s such a wasted opportunity for people to be helping insects, especially when you spot a bumblebee hovering around, attracted by the colour, only for it to fly off without being able to feed. There are lots of beautiful scented bee-friendly roses out there, and the rose breeders like Peter Beales and David Austen say whether the flowers are bee friendly or not. Two I would highly recommend for different situations are rambler Rosa ‘Francis E. Lester’ which hums with bees when in flower, and large shrub Rosa glauca, which needs little maintenance bar the odd stem taking out from the base in spring.

If you would like help with the planting in your own garden, we can help you choose the right plants for your situation, or provide a full planting design.