Skip to content

Drought tolerant perennials

Garden Chat

If you’re looking for dependability and durability, and you have limited water or you’re looking to cut your water bill, here is a sampler of the more than one hundred drought-tolerant perennials that you can count on in the prairies.

European Pasque Flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris) is closely related to our native prairie crocus (P. patens). Just as prairie dwellers ritualistically seek out the prairie crocus each spring to assure themselves that winter is indeed over, so do plant lovers in Europe go trooping after the pasque flower with similar hopes. One of the earliest spring flowers, the European species has larger flowers with brighter, more intense colours than the prairie crocus. More importantly, it is much better adapted to a cultivated garden environment. Large fuzzy buds precede the purple, red, pink or white flowers, which in turn are followed by attractive, silky seed heads. The low plants are ideal for rock gardens or the front of the border with a height and spread of six by eight inches. The foliage is attractive and very finely cut. Plant in full sun in well-drained soil.

Peonies (Paeonia spp.) have graced Saskatchewan gardens since before the First World War. As a testament to their durability, they can still be found blooming in long abandoned farmsteads where no one has tended to them in decades. Most garden peonies are hybrids of the Chinese peony (P. lactiflora), native to Siberia and northern China. It flowers in late spring with white, yellow, pink, red or purple blooms in single to fully double forms. Plants range from two to  three feet in height and spread with bright green, glossy foliage. The single forms are lovely in their simplicity; the flowers weigh less than double forms meaning that plants have no need for supportive hoops. Plant them in deep, well-drained soil in full sun. Ensure that the buds on root divisions of newly acquired plants are planted no deeper than two inches below the soil surface. Deeper planting will delay flowering. Once established, they are extremely drought-tolerant.

Coral Bells (Heuchera spp.) produce a myriad of tiny pink bells held on wiry stalks above a rosette of dark green scalloped leaves that turn bronze in winter. With the deluge of newer introductions featuring purple or variegated foliage, some of the hardiest, toughest and best of the older cultivars are unfortunately no longer widely available. These were bred and introduced by Dr. Henry Marshall during his prolific career at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Morden Research and Development Centre. He crossed the bright red but tender H. sanguinea with our native H. richardsonii, a tough plant with non-descript greenish flowers. The result? Three excellent cultivars that bloom for over four weeks and live for over 30 years: Brandon Pink (coral pink), Ruby Mist (reddish pink) and Northern Fire (dark scarlet red). All are about 20 inches tall and bloom in June and July.

Giant white fleeceflower (Persicaria polymorpha) is truly a giant of a perennial, growing to a height of six feet or more. In spite of its enormous size, it is clump-forming rather than invasive. It looks like a large shrub and its large white flowers are reminiscent of a Japanese tree lilac. It begins blooming in July and continues through to the end of August. Place in full sun. It is adaptable to various soils. Use at the back of a border or as a specimen plant.

Sara Williams is the author of the newly revised and expanded Creating the Prairie Xeriscape and will be teaching Drought-Tolerant Perennials at the University of Saskatchewan on Sunday, April 24, 1-4 p.m. To register, call 306-966-5539.

This column is provided courtesy of the Saskatchewan Perennial Society (www.saskperennial.ca; hortscene@yahoo.com; NEW www.facebook.com/saskperennial). Check out our Bulletin Board or Calendar for upcoming garden information sessions, workshops and tours.