Looking around my neighborhood, you would never know that we live in a desert. Nearly every house is surrounded by a sea of lush, green grass.
Of course, bluegrass is a terribly impractical thing to grow in a place where the summertime temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees, and it usually doesn’t rain during the months of June, July and August. For every year that we've lived here, we have replaced a section of lawn with a garden. The gardens don’t need to be watered every day like the grass does. But they still need to be watered once or twice a week. I often wonder, as I’m turning on the sprinklers, what would happen if we had to go for one year without any supplemental water. Would anything survive? Probably not. Even though my yard is filled with “drought-tolerant” plants, very few of them could actually survive the summer without water. But at least they'd live longer than the bluegrass.
I don't know of any garden plants that can survive in the West without occasional watering, except sagebrush and cactus. Even the most drought-tolerant plants need regular watering during the first year that they are getting established. But we reduce the amount of water that we use by spreading a 1-2" layer of wood-chip mulch over the gardens. Mulch keeps the soil moist and cool. Fresh mulch is added every year to replace the mulch that decomposes.
Here’s a list of the most drought-tolerant plants in my garden. It includes annual and perennial flowers that can be grown from seed and are available for sale on this website.
Drought-Tolerant Perennials
Drought-Tolerant Annuals
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