Oddly, my salvias are doing fine, my oldest one, the Blue Anise Sage (Salvia coerulea 'Costa Rica Blue') is blooming like gangbusters, looks the same as always. Of course, the Mexican Bush Sage (Salvia leucantha) that was already here always does fine, I barely water it. Canary Island Sage (Salvia canariensis) is doing well too. I added Salvia 'Amistad' and Salvia 'Raspberry Truffle' just this year from Flowers by the Sea and they both look fine. They have been getting a once a week good soaking, sometimes every other week.
All my heuchera are fine, Amethyst Myst, Crimson Curls, and Melting Fire are my best ones even in the sun.

Over half of my roses are own root and so far, I see no difference. But my garden is young.
Maybe our soil is different?

I lost two coreopsis to gophers this year.

Best plants for easy care and drought tolerant for me this year, to name a few:
Flowering Maple (Abutilon 'White')
Bidens (Bidens aurea 'Red Drop')
Bur Marigold (Bidens aurea Solaire® Yellow)
Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron 'Sea Breeze')
Erigeron glaucus 'Wayne Roderick'
Blanket Flower (Gaillardia 'Fanfare Blaze')
Hedgerow Cranesbill (Geranium pyrenaicum 'Bill Wallis')
Verbena (Verbena x hybrida Superbena® Royale Chambray)
English Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia 'Hidcote')
Mexican Cardinal Flower (Lobelia laxiflora)
Uruguayan Firecracker Plant (Dicliptera squarrosa)
Catmint (Nepeta x faassenii 'Walker's Low')
Russian Sage (Salvia 'Little Spire')

Sue, I think the difference in most cases stems from the difference in the plants we grow. I only have two of the plants on your list of drought-tolerant plants, for example, and I think you have only one or two own-root hybrid teas.

As for the salvias, they surprised me with their lack of tolerance. The culinary sages were the first to disappear, followed quickly by the coeruleas, which was especially upsetting because I like them a lot. The microphyllas are doing well, on the other hand, and all of my Wendy's Wish and Ember's Wish plants are surviving on twice-weekly watering. I still have all five of the S. mexicana 'Limelight,' but I have to water them every day without fail.

Coreopsis never do well here in drought conditions, nor do any Salvia except greggii.

Okay, I have been avoiding Camellias because I thought they needed tons of water. After reading this blog entry, you KNOW what I am going to be trying soon.

I am amazed by the camellias, Debra. I always thought of them as less showy cousins of Rhododendrons and Azaleas, but they're a lot "showier" than their cousins in a drought, and they can take more sun than the other two, which makes their siting less complicated. I don't have to look for shady sites for them.

I have a space that was taken by a Rose of Sharon tree which died in our May rains. Been looking for something to put in that space that would get about 8 feet tall and I think something like this one might work:
http://www.panoramicfarm.com/c...

Beautiful!

Interesting! My camellia's are stars too! The only water they've had is dishwater, once in a while, (there are lots of them, so they have to share,) & coffee grounds, and they're blooming like crazy. My salvia's have always done well in drought conditions. The roses I've inherited are also surviving happily on dishwater & coffee grounds. I was interested to hear your thoughts on own root roses - those were my favorites at my old house, but now I'm glad that I inherited hybrid teas. I think that Sue & I bought the same bidens last spring - I love it & have lot of cuttings & rooted them, so I have several plants... Also love fleabane, blanket flower, lavender, catmint... The white albutilon that Sue told me to buy did very well & produced lots of long seed pods, but the frost has been too much for the foliage; hopefully, it will come back next spring.

I wouldn't worry about the abutilon. They always come back in zone 9.

If you inherited grafted hybrid teas, they'll do okay. It's rare for hybrid teas to thrive on their own roots. I recently looked through my rose list and found that I'm growing 584 hybrid teas, and only 21 of them are doing well on their own roots. Most of mine are grafted, of course, but I do have more than 100 own-root hybrid teas that might as well be thrown out. They're never going to amount to much. Here's my post about the ones that do well on their own roots, in case you're interested.

http://garden.org/thread/view_...

As for the salvias, I think I was growing the wrong ones in most cases. Some of my salvias sailed through the drought with no problem.

Oops, I meant to say white mandevilla, not abutilon; my abutilon's are doing amazingly well with the cold. I know that my hybrid teas are grafted, because of all the sucker growth I have to cut off the bottom!

Mandevilla laxa comes back reliably each year.

Glad to hear that! I thought that I remembered Sue saying it was okay with the cold. Thanks Zuzu!

@Calif_Sue

Hi, Sue! I was actually going to tree-mail you in the morning because I hadn't seen posts for awhile. {{waving madly at you}}

Hey Debra!! I am still here, just busy working and sewing a lot, I go in spurts with that so my gardening and posting here slows down but I still check in for any admin work daily and do a little scanning of watched threads.