How to plan a beautiful garden in dry soil

Every garden is dry sometimes, but in some climates and with some soil types, moisture is always at a premium. Scant rainfall typical of some regions, as well as in areas where late-summer droughts create temporary desert conditions, sets the stage for a garden created with dry soil in mind. In these and other types of dry, sunny sites, you can still have a colourful garden by using plants that are adapted to these conditions and by using the special planting techniques described here.

All gardens need supplemental water once in a while, but growing plants that are natural water misers, such as cotoneaster, stonecrop and yucca, keeps this need within practical limits. Look to nature for clues to help you find promising plants. Prairies and mountainsides as well as arid parts of the world have contributed a wealth of beautiful plants that will thrive in a garden like yours. And they are not all cacti!

• Garden-worthy plants with succulent, water-holding leaves like portulaca and stonecrop are specially adapted to dry environments because their thick leaves work like small water reservoirs.
• Silver-leaved plants, such as artemisia, Russian sage and sun rose, reflect excess light, and the downy hairs on the leaves and stems of these and other plants shade and insulate them from the evaporative power of the sun.
• Deeply rooted perennials and ornamental grasses are good choices.
• Cotoneaster works well due to its small, waxy leaves.
• Among annuals, those with papery "petals", which are really modified leaves called bracts, such as globe amaranth and zinnia, keep their fresh appearance through days of baking heat.

Summer is always the most stressful season in a dry garden, but you may be amazed at how easy it is to succeed at growing "off-season" plants that are quenched by winter rains.

• Even in high deserts, spring-flowering bulbs like crocuses, daffodils and tulips blissfully bloom in spring with little or no supplemental water during their most active period of growth, which is from late fall to late spring.Later, when Mother Nature turns up the heat and turns off the water, these plants quietly go dormant.
• In dry climates with mild winters, take advantage of cold-tolerant annuals that can be grown from seed sown outdoors in fall, such as larkspur, poppies and even cosmos. They'll need supplemental watering until they germinate, unless the season is wet, but any soil holds water longer at the end of the year than during summer.

Consider this list of flowers and plants that thrive in dry situations:

• Blanket flower
• Blue star
• Butter daisy
• Butterfly weed
• Coreopsis
• Dianthus
•  Dusty miller
• Euphorbia
• Geranium
• Goldenrod
• Grape hen and chicks
• Iris juniper
• Lavender
• Love-in-a-mist
• Mugo pine
• Ornamental onion
• Periwinkle
• Portulaca
• Purple coneflower
• Rudbeckia
• Sedum
• Sneezeweed
• Thyme
• Verbena
• White pine
• Zinnia

The same gardening techniques that serve desert gardeners apply to areas with sandy soil, which dries out quickly no matter how much rain falls, and they can also be used to good effect on a slope that is difficult to water because of runoff.