Which plants will survive and can I use grey water? Gardening as UK summers get drier

As parts of Beth Chatto’s visionary drought-tolerant gardens in Essex turn brown, the head gardener offers advice Her debut book, in 1978, was titled The Dry Garden. Since then, the late Beth Chatto created a rich legacy with her expertise as a plantswoman and by setting up one of the oldest unwatered public gardens in England. Once a car park but transformed in 1992 into an experiment to test what plants were drought-tolerant in Essex, the driest county in the UK, Chatto’s gravel gardens sou...

By Lisa O’Carroll Senior correspondent