The photograph on the right was taken in my garden last year when the clouds hardly parted. The grass was green, the flowers were happily billowing over the border and I was moaning about the non-stop rain.

This year is oh so different. We’ve hardly had precipitation since early spring and I’ve watched the clouds deposit rain a few miles away, the grey bars slanting down like piano keys being played by a heavenly giant.

So my grass is a brown thatch, the dahlias are barely above a foot in height and the strawberries are ripening on the plants only they are the size of peas. And, yes, I’m moaning.

Today heavy rain was forecast, but so far the sky remains resolutely bright. However, there are glimmers of hope in the garden. My silvery plants are better than ever. The Ballota pseudodictamnus is a white cloud of foliage punctuated by green apple-like discs.

Achillea ‘Martine’ is a vision with lemon-yellow florets covering flat heads and my sun-loving salvias are doing now what they normally do in August — flowering profusely. These are aromatic plants able to produce a pungent oil. This is the plant version of sunscreen, so I can understand their survival.

But other plants are more baffling. Echinaceas planted at least two years ago seem oblivious to the drought and the heleniums are not flagging as badly as I thought they would. Both are from the plains of North America where hot summers are the norm.

I feel morally bound not to turn the hose on them and, even if I did, it may do more harm than good. The chances are that many plants are plunging their roots down deeply into the ground in their search for water. If my plants detect water at the surface, when the inevitable hosepipe ban arrives, they could be in greater distress than if I’d just left them well alone.

One thing is immediately noticeable: the paler coloured white, yellow and pale-pink flowers have browned badly in the strong sunshine probably because of having less pigment and more air in their petals. The stronger blues, magentas and purples remain vibrant and blue is the colour that’s holding my dry garden together.

The violet-blue Campanula lactiflora ‘Prichard’s Variety’ is still producing clusters of bells, but just a little less gloriously than usual. Two sterile hardy geraniums, ‘Orion’ and ‘Rozanne’, are also producing masses of flower. ‘Orion’ is a more vibrant-blue than Rozanne and it flowers from early May.

Any day now I will cut it back hard in the hope of rejuvenating it for September flower. ‘Rozanne’ is a sprawler with mottled, fuller foliage and powder-blue flowers zoned in grey-white. At RHS Wisley this plant is cut back hard in early May so that it produces later flowers.

In among these two, the wine-red buttons of Knautia macedonica add a contrasting spark of colour. It is not everyone’s favourite plant, owing to its tendency to self-seed, but I love the rich pink-red buttons as much as the bees. Close by the dark-blue spires of Salvia verticillata ‘Purple Rain’, selected by Piet Oudolf as one of his favourites, is waning slightly. But dark purple calices make up for fading flower.

Dusky sedum foliage is also helping to lift the garden and this year the dry weather has made it even blacker. Sedum ‘Purple Emperor’ vie with two very similar sedums – ‘Karfunkelstein’ and ‘Xenox’.