Plenty of plants are sold as drought tolerant. Far fewer are drought tolerant and tolerant of alkaline limestone soil, a week of standing water in May, and an occasional hard freeze. These are the ones we keep coming back to.
Full sun, poor soil
- Blackfoot daisy — flowers most of the year, hates being watered, dies of kindness more than neglect.
- Damianita — low, aromatic, and gold in spring. Needs sharp drainage.
- Rock rose — reseeds gently, tolerates being cut hard, flowers through heat.
- Autumn sage — the most reliable colour in a hot bed we know.
Structure and grasses
- Little bluestem — the backbone of our prairie work. Copper through winter.
- Lindheimer muhly — soft, tall, and astonishing when backlit.
- Sideoats grama — the state grass, and tougher than it looks.
Dry shade, which is the hardest brief we get
- Turk’s cap — flowers in genuine shade, feeds hummingbirds, dies back and returns.
- Inland sea oats — spreads, which is either the feature or the problem depending on the bed.
- Cedar sedge — a fine-textured evergreen groundcover for under oaks.
- Pigeonberry — low, flowers and fruits at once, genuinely happy in dry shade.
Plant in autumn
Almost all of these establish far better planted in October than in April. A fall planting gets a full cool season to put roots down before it has to face a summer. Spring planting means the plant is establishing and surviving heat at the same time.