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Luckily, there are many colourful, hardy plant species that are easy to combine in containers, beds and borders and in interesting and different accent pieces for your garden.

Happy Sempervivum in Satellite Dish Planters

Sedum on green roofs are becoming a much talked about addition on everything from skyscrapers to chicken coops to dog houses.


Try planting Sedum on your barnboard nest boxes and give the birds something to chatter about.

Containers spilling over with healthy and happy succulent plants on your deck or sun drenched patio no longer means watering twice or three times a day – you won’t be a slave to these drought smart plants!

Many xeric plants are not only drought smart and water wise, they have many other unique strategies to help them thrive in less than ideal conditions. Investigate the potential, and find out some incredible facts about these wonderful plants.

Sedum and Sempervivum in a Rustic Kettle

Here you'll find the information you need to plan, design and nurture your perfect ecological niche. You may also get inspiration for beautifying your garden with rustic garden crafts, unique and clever ideas for displaying succulents as well as ideas for using many drought smart plants in your garden.

Browsing through the plants on this website will give you a wealth of beautiful plants to choose from to create your special habitat. Wildlife, birds, butterflies and other insects will visit to feed and raise their families in the beautiful garden you’ve fashioned.

Many gardeners sense a mysterious attraction to drought smart plants. You may feel the pull of their symmetry and simplicity like many others before you, and admire their toughness and resilience in conditions of poor soil, infrequent watering and neglect. Your garden can still look lush and inviting, even when you don’t have time to water and cater to the whims of more fussy plants.

In the Victorian age, many of these gorgeous succulent plants were collected by their avid fans, and then sadly forgotten; now they’ve been re-discovered in this age of dry garden exploration. Begin your exciting journey into the world of xeric gardening.

• Sedum

  There are many beautiful varieties to accent your xeric garden. Use them on your green roof to create a haven for butterflies, bees and birds right in your own backyard. They’ll hold your precious soil in place with their tenacious but well behaved growth, and add texture and colour to rockeries, walls, borders and planters.

• Sempervivum

  The vast array of textures and colours will astound you. Use them to make your very own living patchwork quilt - you’ll be constantly amazed as the hues change with the seasons.

• Jovibarba

  These rare and unusual rosette forming plants will satisfy the collector as well as the novice, and add a whole new dimension to your xeric garden.

• Thyme

  The most romantic and free-flowering ground covers to soften your world.

• Echeveria

  An incredible array of blue to grey, pink to mahogany, crinkled, warty, and soft, rubbery textures to delight and fascinate you.

• Haworthia

  Jewel-like textural, spiky, striped leaves, some with windows built into them, some with corky lines as an added attraction.

• Aloe

  Irresistible hummingbird magnets beloved for their spiky but soft leaves with spots, stripes, textured lines and not least for their spires of bell like blooms to attract those tiniest of birds.

• Aeonium

  These rare, unusual, precious gems of darkest purple, palest lime green and every colour in between.

• Tender Succulent Plants

  to enhance your collection, some rare, some old fashioned but new again.

If you're interested in rustic crafts or making a succulent wreath or a barnboard potting bench you'll find ideas, inspiration and information on techniques for many such crafts using salvaged and found materials.

I’m Jacki Cammidge, Certified Horticulturist, avid xeric gardener and wildcrafting artisan. Join me on the adventure of a lifetime in the hunt for exotic, unusual, intriguing and fascinating Drought Smart Plants.

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