The water crisis here in California has us thinking about gardens and plants that can thrive with minimal water needs. We browsed our Image Gallery—a collection of more than 3,800 photos—for inspiration and found some of our favorite dry gardens.
Above: Lambley Nursery outside of Melbourne, Australia offers several acres of drought-tolerant gardens to visitors year-round. Some plants are Australian natives, but hundreds of varieties are imported from dry climates around the world. Learn more in A Garden You Water Four Times a Year and browse our galleries of Xeriscape & Desert Gardens and Succulents.
Above: Beth Mullins of Growsgreen Landscape Design used buff-colored gravel as a permeable substrate to allow rainfall to linger in this drought-tolerant San Francisco garden. Learn more about the project in A City Garden with a Spectacular View and view all of our gardens in San Francisco.
Above: Drought-tolerant plants Cordyline 'Renegade' and Senecio mandraliscae 'Kleinia' flourish in a container garden in a Southern California residential landscape by Boor Bridges Architecture. See the rest of the garden in Garden Visit: Drought-Tolerant in Southern California and view all examples of Container Gardening in our gallery.
Above: Garden designer Janet Hankinson chose drought-tolerant Muhlenbergia grass to join existing rosemary and baccarus in stabilizing a Berkeley, California hillside garden. Read more about the project in The Landscape Designer Is In: Drought-Tolerant, Deer Resistant—and on a Budget—In Berkeley and browse our gallery of Grasses.
Above: Green carpet rupturewort is a thick groundcover plant suitable as a lawn substitute. It has one long tap root rather than many surface roots, aiding in water conservation. Read about this and other low-water lawn alternatives in Fields of Green: 5 Favorite Lawn Substitutes and browse our gallery of Lawn Gardens.
Find more inspirational images in our gallery of Bulbs & Tubers, Roses, and Spring Gardens.