I got such favourable responses to last week’s article about landscaping with droughts in mind and several questions about what other plants are good for this time that I decided to do a follow-up article with a few more tips.

To start the research yourself, you can actually look around you and see what plants are still thriving throughout the drought. Look at plants that are in areas that are not being “tended”, because despite the NWC restrictions on watering plants some gardens may still be doing so, so looking in people’s yards may not be useful because these plants are being cared for.

So, learning from our experience this year, here is a good landscaping approach for the future.

o Plant trees that thrive and/or flower in the dry season, like Palms, Poui, Poinciana and Oleanders, for example. You can get trees at the Forestry Department and they can certainly guide you as to what to buy

o You can go with a tropical garden as your theme, because obviously, tropical plants thrive in the heat. Include flowering plants like lantanas and bluebeards and lots of shrubs and trees that love the heat. I’ll be the first to admit that I am not much of a gardener, so have the pros at the flower shop guide you, but an even better suggestion is…travel with your camera and take pictures of plants you like that you see thriving despite the drought

o And if you are like me and would prefer little to no maintenance in your landscaping, you could go with a desert-style landscaping and go with cacti and agave for a really rustic dry weather scheme

o Use pebbles, stones and boulders in your landscape instead of grass and water features. Once laid, these require no further care and look great whether rain or shine

The advantage of choosing drought-tolerant plants is that they save time and money and thrive in soil of fairly poor quality, so as of now I hope we will all carefully consider how we landscape, and prepare for the worst without ever sacrificing the look.