Designing gardens for a changing climate

Garden for the Future at Sheffield Park & Garden

This summer's heat is doing what no lecture on climate resilience ever could: it's showing people, in their own back gardens, exactly which plants were never suited to the site in the first place. Temperatures have already spiked hard across much of the UK on several occasions. Lawns have browned off. Borders have wilted. Watering cans have become a daily fixture rather than an occasional chore.

The instinct is to reach for more water. I'd argue the opposite: the answer is fewer of the wrong plants, not more irrigation. This isn't a new idea, Beth Chatto was making the case from her own dry Essex garden back in the 1960s, and the principle hasn't changed since: right plant, right place. Choose species suited to the conditions a site genuinely has, rather than forcing the wrong ones to survive on artificial life support, and the garden largely looks after itself.

We're applying that thinking at three very different sites right now, and the differences between them are instructive.

Planting in crushed brick at Garden for the Future

The proof: a National Trust garden with a second summer of zero irrigation

At our National Trust project Garden For The Future at Sheffield Park and Garden in East Sussex, which opened last summer we designed and planted with the future climate in mind. We watered it through its first season, in 2025, which happened to be one of the hottest, driest April–May periods on record. This year, its second season, it has had no irrigation at all, and it's holding up.

That's not a coincidence; it's the design working as intended. Arthur Soames used this same garden a century ago as a testbed for plants from around the world. We picked up that thread deliberately, planting over 5,000 plants and 30 trees, including Wollemi pines and cork oaks, across distinct micro-habitats: dry raised beds of crushed brick and sand holding Chamaerops humilis, euphorbias and Tulbaghia violacea, through to shadier dry-woodland planting for species needing the opposite conditions. The clay beneath Sheffield Park saturates over winter and cracks in summer, so we raised sections of the borders to manage rainfall on site rather than fight it. The garden is, deliberately, a live trial, it will tell the Trust, and us, which species actually cope as the UK's climate shifts over the coming decades.

CGI of the vision for Medjez-El-Bab

The scale: an 85% reduction in irrigated turf at a Commonwealth war cemetery

We're applying the same principle at Medjez-El-Bab, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Tunisia's Medjerda Valley, where over 2,900 servicemen from the North African campaign are buried among olive groves and farmland. The brief: reduce irrigated turf by more than 85%, replacing it with planting suited to five months of annual drought, without losing the dignity and restraint a CWGC site demands.

Olive, bitter orange, pomegranate and jacaranda trees are planted already. Next comes underplanting beneath the groves and gravel gardens around the headstones using thyme, lavender, native grasses and tough Mediterranean sub-shrubs, chosen because they can take the heat. We're taking the same design language further in early concept work at Mazargues War Cemetery in Marseille and Les Baraques Military Cemetery in Sangatte, testing how traditional war cemeteries can adapt to their local ecology without compromising what they exist to do: commemorate, with dignity.

Occasionally a plant will fail, we don't treat that as a design error. It's what happens when you plant for genuine long-term resilience instead of propping something up indefinitely with water and fertiliser it was never going to need if we'd chosen better in the first place.

Turf being removed at The Commonwealth War Graves Commission site at Medjez-El-Bab

The residential versions: a Sussex farmhouse and a Chichester estuary garden

None of this requires an institutional client or a war cemetery. On a residential project in Sussex,  a former working farm, we’ve  planted a gravel garden of scented Mediterranean species and protected it with rabbit fencing and irrigated for its first year only. The fencing is down and the garden needs no irrigation. At a coastal garden near Chichester, we built the design around what was already there, mature oaks and estuary views, letting the woodland run into open grassland and wetland habitat, rather than imposing a scheme the site would have to be fought into supporting.

Same principle, different postcode: work out what a place already wants to do, then help it do that. Whether the client is a homeowner, the National Trust, or the Commonwealth War Graves Commission doesn't change the logic,  only the scale.

Drone shot of the gravel garden at one of our Sussex farmhouse project

Beyond drought: what climate-resilient design actually has to withstand

Drought tolerance is the visible half of this. The less visible half is soil that can absorb intense rainfall after long dry spells, planting that tolerates milder, wetter winters, and shifting pest and disease pressure that didn't exist in the same form a decade ago. At Sheffield Park, that meant re-engineering the soil structure itself before the plants went in. At Medjez-El-Bab, it means the planting and soil preparation have to do almost all of the work, because irrigation, once establishment is over, isn't coming back.

Heatwaves are becoming more frequent, and the intense rainfall that follows them is becoming more frequent too. Plants will keep surprising us,  some with their tenacity, some by failing. Both are part of the process, not a departure from it.

Our Chichester coastal wildlife garden one year after planting

FAQ's

Do established gardens need regular watering to survive a UK summer? Not if they're planted correctly for the site. We irrigate new planting through its first growing season and stop after that. A garden matched properly to its soil, drainage and exposure shouldn't need routine watering even through an extended dry spell. Sheffield Park's Garden for the Future has had none in its second season, including through this summer's heat.

What is the CWGC doing at Medjez-El-Bab, and why does it matter? Medjez-El-Bab is part of a broader shift in how the Commonwealth War Graves Commission approaches cemetery design — moving toward planting that needs far less water, fertiliser and labour to maintain, without compromising the commemorative purpose of the site. At Medjez-El-Bab specifically, we're replacing more than 85% of irrigated turf with drought-tolerant planting suited to the Medjerda Valley's climate. Early concept work at two further sites, Mazargues in Marseille and Les Baraques in Sangatte, is exploring how far the approach can extend.

What's distinctive about the Garden for the Future at Sheffield Park? It's the first major new planting scheme at Sheffield Park since the National Trust took on the garden in 1954, and it's designed explicitly as a climate trial rather than a fixed ornamental scheme. Over 5,000 plants and 30 trees, including Wollemi pines and cork oaks, spread across dry, damp, sunny and shaded micro-habitats to see which combinations cope as the UK's climate continues to shift.

Is climate-resilient design just another way of saying "drought-tolerant planting"? No, that's only one half of it. The soil has to manage sudden heavy rainfall after dry spells just as much as it has to support plants through drought, and the planting has to tolerate a wider swing in winter and summer temperatures than it would have a generation ago. At Sheffield Park we addressed this by amending heavy clay with crushed brick and sand and raising sections of the borders to manage water on site.

Does climate-resilient planting mean every garden ends up looking Mediterranean? No. Species selection follows the site, not a house style. Medjez-El-Bab draws on Mediterranean and north African species suited to genuine drought; Sheffield Park draws on temperate species from both the Mediterranean and the southern hemisphere, because it sits within a curated ornamental garden with a very different brief. The same principle produces two different plant palettes.

What is "right plant, right place" and does it actually work?

It's the principle that a garden suited to its existing soil, sun and drainage needs little ongoing intervention, popularised by garden designer Beth Chatto from her dry Essex garden in the 1960s. Rather than irrigating species that were never suited to a site, you select ones that are — Joe Perkins Design has applied this at scales from a Sussex farmhouse gravel garden to the National Trust's Sheffield Park, both now running without irrigation.