The best heat- and drought-proof flowers that will keep you in blooms over the approaching scorching summer are the floribunda or groundcover rose bushes you planted 15 years ago, that have had time to grow big roots, or the clumps of Russian sage you cleverly established five years ago with its spires of blue flowers, the buddleia or "butterfly bush" planted five years ago and watered and kept weeded, or the purple bougainvillea planted 20 years ago so it has now grown out of frost reach. The "flowers" are really bracts, but let's not go into that.
If you decided to live dangerously a decade or more ago and planted an oleander bush or hedge, even though all parts of the bush are extremely toxic to humans and pets, its red, pink or white blooms will be almost indestructible despite the heat. There's one Canberra courtyard planted with oleander in memory of a hedge in Crete that kept an Aussie soldier safe from German fire for more than a week. Thanks to those oleanders and the neighbouring Cretan farmer's family, he eventually escaped. The farm's kitchen wall is papered in Australian postcards and both garden's oleanders bloom red every summer.
