Heatwave after heatwave swept across the UK this summer. England's Green and Pleasant Land turned into a brown dust bowl and even the trees with the deepest roots began to hang, before dropping their leaves in an attempt to survive the highest temperatures on record.
At first it was lovely to wake up to clear blue skies and sunshine every day, but then it became a bit frightening, as weeks slipped into months without rain.
At JamJar Edit, we have had a challenging year in terms of replenishing our pressed flower archives. Flowers came into bloom and disappeared again in the blink of an eye.
Inevitably, the reality of a changing climate is prompting many of us to rethink what we plant and how we garden. Now that the rain has finally returned, it’s the perfect time to look ahead to next year and consider plants that will thrive in drier conditions. With that in mind, we wanted to share some of our favourite drought-tolerant species that are not only well suited to the changing climate, but also beautiful when pressed.
Garden Flowers
Garden flowers such as nasturtiums, calendula, catmint, hardy geraniums (cranesbill), sanguisorba, Russian sage (Perovskia), Verbena bonariensis, achillea, Japanese anemone, eryngium — particularly the beautifully delicate Eryngium planum – limonium, Knautia macedonica, pelargoniums and the perennial scentless sweet pea (Lathyrus latifolius) can mostly survive the heat and will press well.
Nevertheless, even the toughest plants benefit from a little care – deadheading, cutting back and occasional watering will help considerably. Complete neglect isn't really an option if you want to keep the garden colourful and productive through a long, hot summer.
This year a late July visit to the Arvensis garden centre in Wiltshire was inspiring. They had not watered since May, but the carefully structured waves of planting were still very beautiful despite the drought. We are also huge fans of the Serge Hill Project, the Plant Library developed and managed by award-winning garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith, which places emphasis on plants that are long-lived and tolerant of our increasingly warm and dry weather conditions.
Wild Flowers
Our favourite wildflowers at this time of year are fennel, introduced by the Romans as a culinary herb, the long-legged and curvy blue field scabious and the ubiquitous Daucus carota (wild carrot), which is found almost everywhere.
Many umbellifers are called 'Queen Anne's Lace', but we believe that Daucus carota wears the crown – if you look closely, among the white lacy umbels there will often be a single drop of blood red from where Queen Anne pricked her finger as she sewed. The cultivated variety is more purplish-red than its wild cousin – both make excellent pressings.
Favourites for Pressing
Fennel: with its starry yellow flowers and delicious aniseed scent, it can often be found growing along roadsides and in coastal places. Once established in the garden, fennel needs virtually no maintenance and self seeds very readily.
Field scabious: with wonderful long and twisting stems, topped with small lilac-blue pincushion flowers, look for it on chalky grassland and downland. In the garden it prefers nutrient-poor conditions that mimic its natural meadow habitat.
Nasturtiums: Wonderfully unruly, given half a chance Nasturtiums will scramble over everything in reach. Press some of the flowers in profile; with others, place their wide, flat trumpets face down. Press the leaves too - almost perfectly circular, they fade with ethereal beauty.
Wild Carrot: Daucus carota, an abundant and intricate flower found in many different habitats. Look closely among its delicate white umbels and you may find a single dark red floret. Cultivated forms are often a richer purplish-red, but the wild plant has a delicacy of its own.
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