Thanks for writing up your perspective on gardening over there! Next time I get the chance to a climate like that, I will try to reflect for a moment on how much work goes into gardening there.

Thank you for sharing the difficulties in your climate and garden - it sounds like it is sloped in some areas, which must add to watering challenges. The past three summers have been so much longer and hotter than I ever expected, and when my favorite nursery went out of business last year I purchased hundreds of new young perennials. Even planted in the fall, they have been a challenge to get established with all the dry heat. I hope you get that Friday rain!

Steve, my experience is that a lot of work goes into gardening everywhere. Our climate is actually quite a good one--don't know how long that will last, with climate change--it's our soil that's hard to work with, and the steepness of the land, and the absence of trees and major shrubs, though we've improved there over time. Also I've been in poor health all this year, and consequently low in energy, so that I haven't been able to do much maintenance. The garden always looks sad in summer, but not usually this sad.

On the other hand, and quite unexpectedly, it's raining this evening!!!!! Our own little cloud, and, though it may not last long, any precipitation helps. Really glad for the water, and the cooling effect.

Elf Rosa, your reply came while I was writing this, so I'm adding a postscript. "Sloping" isn't the word: most of the garden is seriously steep, and yes, it is hard to deal with! It sounds as though you're dealing with similar difficulties in getting plants established through hot dry summers. The good thing is, we've gotten lots of plants started, however much of a pain it was, so it can be done. I'm always impressed at how much drought my garden can take, once the plants are past the first year. That's a comfort, for those who have to deal with water restrictions, or are simply thrifty with this limited resource. Thanks for the good wishes! And good luck to you!

I feel for you, Melissa. We are so grateful for any rain here too. I remember reading Beth Chatto's "The Dry Garden" before I moved here and it all sounded so wonderful and natural. Of course, I soon realized she is in a dry part of England which is a far cry from our summer heat here.

Her garden was inspirational, but I agree supplemental summer water is necessary here too. I am not sure if forever or just a year or two. I have kept on it here for now. I do hope your health snaps back. That long Covid is no joke.

Sheila, isn't your average annual precipitation pretty low? I suspect that makes a major difference, though it would have to be investigated for a person to know for sure. Our annual rainfall may be changing, but it is, or used be, about a meter a year.

I read 'The Dry Garden', too, though I'm not sure how much I got from it. Chatto's conditions were different from mine: she got less annual rainfall than we receive here, and I seem to remember had a different kind of soil, too...sandy? It was already back in western Washington that I began learning how well plants could pull through weeks and months without rain. At that time the area didn't experience that much summer heat, but there was a good dry period then. I was already interested in dry gardening when I moved to Italy, based on my experiences in Washington, and alert to the possibilities that water might not be infinitely available.

Thank you very much for the good wishes.

Melissa, our average might be 18-20 inches rain/yr in Winter. So hotter and dryer than England for sure.

It sounds extremely challenging, Melissa, and I'm astounded by how much you've accomplished through the years, although I know it entailed a lot of hard work. One advantage of your clay soil is that it retains water for a long time, certainly much longer than my decomposed granite. What you've created is absolutely astonishing, and I'm certain many people (and I'm one of them) would have confined themselves to planting the areas mainly around the house and leaving those steep areas to fend for themselves. Your vision was a much grander one which I'm sure has hugely benefitted the wildlife, birds and bees, a not inconsiderable boon in these times. You're not only gardening for yourself but for those who come after you. I remember that you planted trees that you might not live long enough to see them come to full maturity, which is a truly unselfish act. I also hope that you will get better very soon; I've read a lot about long Covid and it is no joke. There's a lot of work going on to try to combat it, but they're not quite there yet.

Ingrid, thanks, both for the good wishes and for the kind words. About soil, we certainly have to wrestle with ours, but I'd still take it over your soil or over sand, for instance. As you say, clay holds water. It may be a huge task to turn it into good gardenable soil (something I'm not sure we've yet accomplished, actually), but clay can be improved. It can reach a point where there's no need to continue amending it: the plants growing in that soil supply all the amendment needed. That's my long term goal in the garden. And though we're a long way from that point, it's endlessly comforting to see how many things grow in this obstinate clay.

I take for granted planting for the long term, but it was DH, Mr. Immediate Gratification, who at the age of eighty planted a whole section of seedling trees and has continued to maintain them since. All these years of gardening have taught him something. And he's still working out there, running along after the motor scythe and helping put up pergolas.

East Anglia is classed as semi-arid, with 70cm of rain per annum (in a good year, which the last few have not been). The driest part of the UK plus lean, sandy soil (but flat, open and sunny), I know about drought and, with an allotment hosepipe ban, am slowly, but surely turning my entire plot into a no-water dry garden. Although our gardens are likely to be very different, Melissa, I suspect we are enduring the same doubts and frustrations...not least because we are not those lithe and sprightly striplings, able to work entire days, trudging up and down with barrows, buckets and busy spades.

This time of the year, even when hosepipes were allowed, has always been challenging, but I now have to accept that geums, asters, thalictrum, hemerocallis, veronicastrum, heleniums and even hardy geraniums are not possible anymore .I have grown less and less fruit and vegetables (cos I am a reluctant cook after 5 decades of family meals). So many wild plans and whims have fallen by the wayside - always shocking to read of this or that plant and think, 'hmmm, I had that, wonder what happened to it'.

There are some (fleeting) times of the year when the garden is breathtakingly lovely .

Spring bulbs are stellar and reliably perennial - species tulips, anemone coronaria, primula, camassias, lathyrus , hellebores et al, are glorious but O, when June slips into July, the garden is a sorry state indeed. The once blooming roses (which would be more or less all of them) have done their thing, along with philadelphus, rosemary and cistus, leaving the shrubby salvias and catmints to keep going through till September. Of course, the weeds have no reticence...exploding with exponential growth but here's a brief list of plants I either have already (and are doing well) or those I am planning to start over the next few years.

Anything with a robust storage system - tubers, taproots, corms...so dierama, iris, platycodon, callirhoe, habranthus, some ipomeas, baptisia and althea cannabina. eryngiums and echinops.

Silvery foliage or tomentose leafage...some salvias, phlomis, convolvulous cneorum, anthemis, artemisia, lavender, buddleja

Plants which slip into semi-dormancy, returning with autumn rains - a number of SA daisies such as osteospermum, gazania, felicia, convolulous mauritanicus

Plants which can keep their stomata open during night (known as CAM plants) Sedums, kalanchoe, opuntia and crassula can transpire with minimal water loss.

Plants which tend to have minimal foliage and grow low to the ground - zauschneria, antennaria, hedysarum, some euphorbia, phuopsis, talinums, thymes, gypsophila.

Grasses (some): Once again, I am attempting various meadow schemas, along with my beloved umbellifers and stipa, panicum, muhlenbergia, eragrostis, sporobolis, although I am a bit ambivalent since brome grasses and couch grass are persistent allotment weeds so I worry about the wrong grasses getting into the grasses (iyswim).

It is all a bit experimental, with an emphasis on pollinators and wildlife but I really have no option but to embrace waterwise gardening. I will say that roses tend to do reasonably well...especially the once flowering wildlings such as the early Chinese yellows and the charming pimpinellifolias. I can live without summer roses because autumn brings heps and haws.

So, I have cut back the meadows (I can do either spring flowers (cowslips, anemones, narcissus, meadow rue and ox-eyes)...or later summer flowers (scabious, knapweeds, heliopsis, achilleas). I cannot have both. Holding my nerve with a Chelsea chop on the perennials and hoping for autumn sages, sedums and bulbs such as watsonia, zephyranthes, homeria, rhodohypoxis and species gladioli (such as the ineffably lovely ruby papillio).

We must to adapt and learn resilience. And hope.

@rosaprimula - Nice rundown of the different types of drought-tolerant plants and how they are adapted. Thanks!

That was lovely, rosaprimula! I think Beth Chatto's dry garden was over your way.

rosa primula, I'm envious of your list since no doubt 90% or more of those plants would be gobbled up in my garden within one day of being planted. The other 5%, which would be oleanders and mimulus, still remain and they are the ones I will have more of in the future. I am also attempting a few roses in cages so there is always something to look forward to.

Rosaprimula, tbanks for the list: that was great. I may start working on eliminating perennial grasses from some parts of the beds, at least. I got started on cleanup of my (so-called) propagating beds, a relatively small area that in recent years has been totally taken over by perennial grasses. If I want to use these beds for their planned purpose, I need to get out that grass. That's what I'm doing, or rather, what I was doing before I ran out of steam.

You do more perennials than I do, by a long shot, but then in my garden the grasses get thigh high, then fall over and smother everything else. It's a problem for small plants, including ones that would get tall in time if they didn't get buried. We have quite handsome natives: anthemis, knapweed, field poppies, some silvery-foliaged annuals I don't know the name of; wild pinks and forget-me-nots in the spring, and many others. And the "settembrini", the unkillable tall asters in pink and purple that bloom in the fall, keeping company with false yellowhead (Dittrichia viscosa) a common weed that I quite admire. I don't do grasses: there are enough of them in the garden already.

How about Teucrium: T. hircanum that seeds all over the garden, and T. fruticans (?), shrub germander, the handsomest silver-foliaged plant of them all? I don't think you mention fennel.

Many of your plants don't work for me, probably because of our very different soils and rainfall amounts. The early yellow roses, for example. And tastes: I'm not admirer of daisies, although if used properly they could be fine, I suppose. I get slightly irritated when my purple coneflower blooms, but it could be good in a group of equally flaunting companions.

I've never gardened much for food, but have perennial herbs--a no-brainer--and every year we plant a few tomatoes. The last couple of years I've been fooling around with garlic. DH planted some a few years ago, then left it to its own devices. Last year I found the descendents, separated and planted some, and now am dealing with the results: replanting--likely this isn't the season--and keeping some to, ah, eat. I understand better now the rigorous order of a good vegetable patch: it makes work much easier. Ours is a hodge-podge of weeds, half decomposed vegetable matter, numerous seedling palms, strawberries, violets, and the garlic. The only thing I can say in its favor is that things do grow there. Think I'll continue experimenting.

Melissa, are there any foods that are associated with your region of Italy? I am more familiar with the south. Tomatoes and citrus near Naples, onions and hot peppers in Calabria. Just wondering what the old-timers in your area would grow in their gardens. Grapes? Or maybe it's too dry at the moment for those?

We can't grow truly tender plants here, so no citrus or date palms or tropicals. But there's plenty of overlap with areas further south in Italy. Wine grapes are traditional--mostly not backyard plants, but commercially grown, and many farmers have their own vineyards for personal use--there has always been a discrete presence of olives, which with the climate growing hotter and drier is increasing. Lots of figs. Northern Italian cooking has its own specialties: Parmesan cheese and Parma ham come from next door neighbor Parma; egg pasta is Emilian (Emilia is collectively the provinces of Piacenza, Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna); Bologna created ragù and mortadella, the latter degraded to the infamous boloney (and ragù to the sauce of the equally infamous spaghetti bolognese, or, even worse, British spagbol). There are numerous varieties of salami and cheeses, and in general a heavier presence in northern Italian cuisine of eggs, butter, meat, often preserved, and cheeses from cow's milk. Polenta is a northern dish, and most if not all of Italy's rice comes from the north, and with it, Italy's rice dishes. Emilia has its own version of lasagna, made with egg pasta and ragù, different from that of the south.

Everybody in the north eats pizza, whose origins are in the south, and spaghetti and other flour-and-water pastas, which I believe are also of central-southern origin (not sure about this last). I would say that, in general, Italians from the center and south of the country eat a more vegetable-centered diet than they do in the north. But there are plenty of vegetables here, of all kinds: onions, potatoes and carrots, garlic, tomatoes, cabbage, chicory and related greens, spinach and chard, bulb fennel, and no doubt the list goes on. But you were asking what old-timers grow in their gardens: well, all of the above. Herbs, of course. People also go foraging.

I think I wandered off-topic: sorry. My own province's (Piacenza) best known specialty is probably pisarei e fasò, a kind of pasta e fagioli, but there are numerous specialties. There are too many for me to go into, but also most are excluded from my vegetarian diet, or too heavy, being fried, so that I've never eaten them and know little about them.