COLLECTION · WATER-WISE

Water-Wise Plants

Plants that hold their own through a Lebanese summer without daily irrigation. Once established, most of these want deep, infrequent watering and nothing else, which is what keeps a garden alive through a dry August and a water bill sane.

Baby Sun Rose

Aptenia cordifolia

A fast, fleshy-leaved trailing succulent covered in small magenta-pink flowers through the warm months. Covers difficult dry ground quickly and spills attractively from raised beds and walls.

Price on request

Bay Laurel

Laurus nobilis

The laurel of the kitchen and of classical wreaths, native to this region and equally happy clipped into a formal shape or left as a large informal shrub. Aromatic, evergreen, and genuinely useful.

Price on request

Treasure Flower

Gazania rigens

Daisy flowers in fierce oranges, yellows, and reds that open with the sun and close again in the evening, over silver-backed foliage. Thrives in hot, poor, exposed ground where little else will flower.

Price on request

Date Palm

Phoenix dactylifera

The true date palm, slimmer and more upright than its Canary Island relative, and productive in hot dry positions. Suckers freely at the base, which can be removed for a single clean trunk or left for a clumped grove effect.

Price on request

Hottentot Fig

Carpobrotus edulis

Thick triangular succulent leaves forming a dense mat, with large yellow flowers fading to pink. Genuinely effective for binding sandy banks and coastal slopes where erosion is a problem.

Price on request

Paperflower

Bougainvillea glabra

The bougainvillea that covers walls and rooftops across the region, its colour coming not from flowers but from papery bracts that hold for months. Ruthlessly drought tolerant and genuinely spectacular at scale.

Price on request

Broad-leaved Paperbark

Melaleuca quinquenervia

Grown for its extraordinary bark, which peels in thick papery cream layers, and for creamy bottlebrush flowers that draw bees for weeks. Tolerates conditions that defeat most trees, including periodically wet ground.

Price on request

Foxtail Agave

Agave attenuata

The softest and most sculptural agave, forming large pale green rosettes with no terminal spine, which makes it safe beside a path. Mature plants send up a long arching flower spike like a fox's tail.

Price on request

Trailing Lantana

Lantana montevidensis

Almost permanently in flower through the warm months, in purple, lavender, or white, and completely unbothered by heat, drought, or poor soil. Spills beautifully over walls, banks, and the edges of raised beds.

Price on request

Century Plant

Agave americana

A monumental blue-grey agave that becomes a dominant architectural feature, eventually throwing a flower spike several metres tall once in its life. Serious presence, and serious spines.

Price on request

Common Myrtle

Myrtus communis

Native to Lebanon and woven through the region's history, with small aromatic leaves, white summer flowers, and blue-black berries. Clips beautifully and releases scent whenever brushed against.

Price on request

Mexican Fan Palm

Washingtonia robusta

The tall, slender fan palm that lines coastal boulevards, growing fast and reaching considerable height on a narrow trunk. Useful where you want vertical scale quickly and have little ground area to give it.

Price on request

Oleander

Nerium oleander

The hardest-working flowering shrub in the Mediterranean, flowering from late spring to autumn on almost no water, in almost any soil, including road verges and salt-blasted coastal sites. Every part of it is highly toxic.

Price on request

Peruvian Pepper Tree

Schinus molle

Weeping, fine-textured, and evergreen, with pink peppercorn clusters that hang all through autumn. Extremely drought tolerant and a genuinely elegant shade tree for a dry Lebanese garden.

Price on request

Turkey Tangle Frogfruit

Phyla nodiflora

A tough low mat of small leaves studded with tiny white and pink flowers, and one of the best genuine lawn alternatives available here. Takes light foot traffic and needs a fraction of the water a lawn does.

Price on request

California Fan Palm

Washingtonia filifera

Stouter and heavier than the Mexican fan palm, with a thick trunk and a dense crown. Slower growing and more cold tolerant, which makes it the better choice slightly inland or at modest altitude.

Price on request

Candelabra Aloe

Aloe arborescens

A large branching aloe that produces tall orange-red flower spikes in the middle of winter, when almost nothing else is in bloom and pollinators need it most. Forms a substantial shrubby clump.

Price on request

Natal Plum

Carissa macrocarpa

Glossy evergreen foliage, fragrant white star flowers through most of the year, and edible crimson fruit, all on a shrub armed with forked thorns that make it a genuinely effective security hedge.

Price on request

Pink Muhly Grass

Muhlenbergia capillaris

Unremarkable for most of the year, then in autumn it produces a cloud of airy pink-purple flower heads that seems to float above the foliage. Nothing else in the catalogue does anything comparable.

Price on request

Prostrate Rosemary

Rosmarinus officinalis 'Prostratus'

The creeping form of culinary rosemary, cascading over walls and terrace edges with the same aromatic needles and blue winter flowers. Useful, evergreen, drought-proof, and edible.

Price on request

Blue Fescue

Festuca glauca

Neat, compact hemispheres of intense steel-blue foliage, useful as a repeated accent in gravel planting or along the front of a bed. Small enough to work in a container or a narrow border.

Price on request

Hopbush

Dodonaea viscosa

Fast, upright, and extremely tough, grown as much for the papery pink seed capsules that follow the insignificant flowers as for the narrow evergreen foliage. Purple-leaved forms are particularly striking.

Price on request

Jade Plant

Crassula ovata

Thick glossy oval leaves on a stout trunk that thickens into a miniature tree with age. Practically unkillable, long-lived, and equally at home on a windowsill or in a terrace pot.

Price on request

Yellow Bells

Tecoma stans

Bright yellow trumpet flowers almost continuously through the warm months, on a fast-growing shrub that thrives in heat and reflected glare. A dependable choice for a hot, difficult corner.

Price on request

Chaste Tree

Vitex agnus-castus

Lavender-blue flower spikes through the hottest weeks of summer, over aromatic grey-green foliage. Native to the Mediterranean, entirely drought proof once rooted, and heavily worked by bees.

Price on request

Mediterranean Fan Palm

Chamaerops humilis

The only palm native to continental Europe and North Africa, naturally multi-stemmed and shrubby rather than tall. Exceptionally tough, and the most regionally appropriate palm for a water-wise Lebanese garden.

Price on request

Prickly Pear

Opuntia ficus-indica

The sabbar of the Lebanese roadside, with flat paddle stems, yellow to orange flowers, and the sweet summer fruit sold from carts across the country. Utterly drought proof and historically used as a living field boundary.

Price on request

Beaked Yucca

Yucca rostrata

A near-perfect sphere of fine blue-grey leaves atop a slowly thickening trunk, ageing into one of the most elegant architectural plants available. Cold hardier than most yuccas, so it works at altitude.

Price on request

Crimson Bottlebrush

Callistemon citrinus

The shrubby bottlebrush, denser and more compact than the weeping tree form, covered in vivid red brushes in spring and again intermittently through summer. Bees work it constantly.

Price on request

Spiny-head Mat Rush

Lomandra longifolia

An extremely tough evergreen strappy plant that looks like an ornamental grass and survives conditions that kill most of them. Handles drought, poor soil, shade, and foot traffic on a bank.

Price on request

Weeping Bottlebrush

Callistemon viminalis

Long weeping branches hung with bright red bottlebrush flowers, repeating intermittently from spring through summer. Tough, fast, and tolerant of poor soil, heat, and coastal wind.

Price on request

Coastal Rosemary

Westringia fruticosa

Looks like rosemary and behaves better: fine grey-green foliage, white to pale lilac flowers for most of the year, and complete indifference to salt wind and drought. Excellent as a low informal hedge.

Price on request

Zwartkop

Aeonium arboreum 'Zwartkop'

Rosettes so dark they read as black in full sun, held up on bare branching stems. An architectural plant that does the work of a sculpture in a courtyard or on a terrace, and asks for almost nothing in return.

Price on request

Mexican Blue Palm

Brahea armata

Striking waxy silver-blue fan leaves on a slow-growing, stocky trunk. One of the most beautiful and most drought-proof palms available, and a genuine focal point in a gravel or water-wise garden.

Price on request

Texas Sage

Leucophyllum frutescens

Silver-white woolly foliage that erupts into purple flowers after a rise in humidity, which is why it is nicknamed the barometer bush. Thrives in exactly the hot, dry, reflected-heat positions that kill other shrubs.

Price on request

Tree Germander

Teucrium fruticans

Silvery-white stems and small grey leaves, topped with pale blue flowers over an unusually long season. Mediterranean to its core, and one of the best silver-foliage shrubs for a dry Lebanese garden.

Price on request

Mediterranean Cypress

Cupressus sempervirens

The dark exclamation mark of every Mediterranean landscape, and native to this region. Planted in a line it makes a windbreak and a boundary at once; planted singly it frames a view. Extremely long-lived and almost indifferent to drought.

Price on request

Stone Pine

Pinus pinea

The umbrella pine of the Lebanese coast, unmistakable in silhouette and the source of the pine nuts used across the region's cooking. Young trees are rounded and bushy, and the flat-topped canopy only develops with real age.

Price on request

Olive Tree

Olea europaea

The tree that defines a Lebanese hillside. Slow, silver leaved, and effectively permanent once established, an olive will outlive the garden it is planted in. Our stock is field grown and hardened off, so it moves into open ground without sulking.

Price on request

Planting something larger?

If you are planning a full garden, an orchard, or a landscape project, we can design and install it rather than supply it plant by plant.

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