Here are some tips for planting in a more climate resilient way:

• Use lots and lots of woody and perennial plants. Quantity and diversity are important, as well as extending the season and choosing open flower structure. If you plant a large diversity there’s more chance of success in the changing climate (as let’s be honest, we don’t know what’s going to survive each year!).
• Ground cover plants are great for conserving soil moisture.
• Trees are essential, but you want to think of layering with shrubs and perennials and grasses in naturalistic borders to mimic a wild woodland edge. This density will improve moisture retention and habitat.
• Self-seeding plants are great if you can skill up to work with them (means avoiding seedlings when weeding!). Self-seeded plants are often more drought tolerant.
• Native plants are essential – that’s meadows, trees, hedges, woodland plants and ‘weeds’. However non-native plants are great too - many pollinators are not fussy, and many non-native plants are more resilient in drought, extend flowering time and produce a lot of nectar. There’s a lot of academic evidence to back the value of non-native plants in climate resilient planting.
• Water. As much water as possible should be saved, not just for watering, but ponds are important in regulating gardens and providing food and drink for wildlife. Think about rain water from roofs and making use of every puddle. Areas that flood can be planted up as swales, ditches or ephemeral ponds.
• Don’t try to be too tidy. Weeds retain moisture in the soil, and so do fallen leaves and dead woody material. Compost heaps and twig piles are an easy way to create habitat, retain moisture and capture carbon. Dead hedges work great on a larger scale. However, if you want to get the public on board it needs to look purposeful – tidy edges, (selective) weed control, stacked debris and mown paths can make the difference between communities embracing or rejecting wilder spaces.
• Meadows are more resilient to drought than lawns. If short grass is essential (which it often is in public space!) sowing white clover into it will improve drought resistance and prevent compaction.

And finally, some useful links: Gardening in a changing climate report from 2017, Environmental horticulture for domestic and community gardens—An integrated and applied research approach, and some books: Planting in a post wild world (Rainer and West, 2015) and Gardening in a changing world (Moore, 2022).

You can also find some useful information on the RHS advice pages.