What has survived in your garden with minimal or no watering?

Looking dreadful: tomatoes, Rosemary, Sweet Peas.
Looking ok: Roses, Penstemon, Cosmos, Pelargoniums.

I keep seeing recommendations for drought tolerant plants. Great, how very useful, most listed as 'likes free draining sandy soil, full sun'. I've yet to find one list that says if you garden on heavy London clay that is waterlogged all winter and like concrete all summer these are the plants for you! In my garden, (heavy London clay in case you missed it!) roses are doing pretty well, along with white Japanese anemones, (the pink ones are struggling), rosemary, lavender (in a raised much improved bed) and surprisingly bedding dahlias, pelargoniums penstemon, and some fuchsia but not all. A well established pittosporum 'Irene Patterson' is doing better than usual and is needing frequent 'haircuts' to keep it within bounds.

The fig tree

Lavender has done well with benign neglect, though the main plant has now gone over as normal. Heathers in the new bed at the side of the drive are holding their own though I have lost two. Salvias and pentstemons, lobelia cardinalis, agapanthus, heucheras and hostas also hanging in there. A lovely scabious I bought last year is as dead as a doornail in spite of watering.

Roses have struggled, and just about all the plants on my two rockeries went over so quickly they were hardly there. The butterflies are still enjoying the buddleia, though.

young people seem unaware of the cost to environment of water waste

Yet they are the ones banging on about saving the planet, and blaming it on all of us oldies!

Everything on my patio has survived because I can water it easily but in the wild wood above my patio all the ground cover - a large-round-leaved plant I don't know the name of - has died, leaving only ivy and brambles. I suspect it will come back though.

Never mind about us fiddling in our gardens! Ask the farmers.

Apparently the harvest is about to collapse, and supermarkets are warning of a real food crises.

We haven’t got a hosepipe ban as yet ! But I am careful I do water the allotment( just the bits that are growing) and I do a quick spin in my not very big garden every other evening

Then we ll eat other things for a while WWM2

Well, as everything we eat is grown, I’m not sure what you mean by “other things”.

The U.K. has sufficient food stored for a maximum of 3 weeks.

I’m not suggesting mass starvation, but I am suggesting that the U.K. turns it attention to our food security and addresses the issues.

Actually ignore my above posts as they are nothing to do with the OP. It is just me letting my mind wander.

Yes I have sempervivums that have received zero water, and creeping thyme - watered once half heartedly. Everything else is struggling, except the Mediterranean types. So lavender, a little blue convolvulus, salvias etc are ok with watering, but phlox, and other plants who like it damp are struggling even though they are being watered.

I think the topic of potential food shortage needs wider coverage than the Gardening forum, Ww.

I’m not trying to be awkward about a change of focus to this thread, I think that food shortages are a very serious problem and need to be much more widely acknowledged and discussed. On the Chat forum perhaps?

Yes I agree. Ignore me - I’m just going off on a tangent - as usual!

Except for one dead azalea everything in the ground has survived albeit looking very sorry, in tubs hostas, lilies, dahlias and geraniums have survived.

Icelandic poppies in my paving.

No water for weeks and no soil to speak of either.

Olive and fig trees are fine. Camellias also. We have a lot of hydrangeas who are very droopy. All washing up water goes to them.

Mrs Popple x3 thriving and never been watered!acanthus is doing well,crocosmia ok. Lavender dead. Sweet peas shorter than usual but prolific. Phlox fine. Achillea I thought I’d lost years ago suddenly reappeared. Foxgloves fine but over. I think I’ve got a foxtail lily which I’ve certainly ever planted. We also acquired a tree with green apples last year,never noticed it before and must have hidden itself behind a crab apple. Now I can’t see the crab apple but the green interloper is suddenly enormous and full of apples. It’s also the first time today I’ve been in the garden since I had an operation three months ago.

I never realised how much of the Mexican Fleebane had escaped to the grass Really looks pretty bought one plant about seven years ago it is everywhere now in the walls. Along the edges. Best investment ever

Weeds! Still looking strong, green and healthy.

I'm in Scotland. Sad to hear you have suffered so badly elsewhere. We have 'only' had 4 weeks or so of no rain so not too much damage, although the crops of barley and oats in the fields around us have been badly affected.
Garden-wise, apples are fine, my Hydrangea only came into leaf a week or so ago, and is only now looking like starting to flower, but I am unsure if it will actually make it. Peonies, didn't even rise in part of the garden, the old ones in another part were fine. Roses have been poor. Clematis not its best.
All the prolific spreaders are doing fine as are the daisies, and some new bushes I planted. Lavender and bacoba looking good.

We don’t have a lawn but both our DDs do, are yellow and turning to dust with weeds thriving.

My Eryngium ( sea holly) is thriving and the bees love it. I have grown a few plants from seed, not expecting anything, but I’m so pleased that I’ll do a couple of different varieties next year.

Everything planted in the soil has been fine without watering, especially the roses. which are having a good year.
Many of my plants are annuals in pots, of which petunias and Busy Lizzies have been as prolific as ever with saved washing up water every 3 or 4 days.
I have exemption from the hose ban, but am still doing my best to conserve water. Temperatures here in Oxfordshire have been between 30C and 40C in the shade every day for weeks.

My lavender bushes have been wonderful (Central Scotland). They are still flowering and the bees are everywhere. I have Japanese anenomes in the same bed and they are flowering profusely. As someone else said, Scotland hasn't had such dry weather as further south. Although there are very dry parts.

Good old nasturtiums are doing well and flowering nicely (Princess of India, Tom Thumb). Also my roses.

I have tended my garden for thirty years and dug in lots of compost. But what with Foxes, snails, cats and the drought, I feel quite discouraged.

Come the spring time, I shall put more nasturtium seeds into the gaps (the soil is stony and infertile) using Baby Rose, Tom Thumb, Princess of India and Alaska mixed.

Nothing everything fine here as I'm in Scotland