By watering a home garden – the personal plot of nature that Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said “…may well employ/ Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart/ Awake to Love and Beauty!” – one becomes susceptible to the scrutinizing glares of “drought shaming.”

To make the most of each drop, OCHOME has compiled this list of plants that will endow a home with both fruits and beauty, even when there isn’t “water, water everywhere.”

Goji Berry

Goji berries “will grow in nothing, basically,” said Jerry Wang, the landscape designer and consultant for Green Thumb Nursery in Lake Forest.

The plant, also called a Chinese wolfberry, grows sprawlingly into a thorny thicket peppered year-round by small, red-orange berries that look like oblong grapes.

“They fruit very young. Sometimes you have fruit on the plant already in the pot,” said Wang. “You can eat them right off the tree, they taste almost like raisins.”

Goji berry shrubs can be planted at any time in California weather, said Wang, and while setting them in the soil, it’s best to use a cactus or citrus potting mix and a hole twice the depth of the plant’s root.

According to Wang, Goji berry plants will grow as much as you let them. Large bushes will produce hundreds of berries.

Pineapple Guava

This slow-growing evergreen shrub has been a popular drought-friendly choice for customers of Scott Brown’s Anaheim Wholesale Nursery.

“It gets some nice fruit on it, pretty tasty,” said Brown. “Essentially once they’re established, you’re watering about once a week. That’s a pretty good rule for these.”

Pineapple guava trees grow with a hedge-friendly density and display flowers with fleshy petals tinged purple and pink that color its foliage.

Register food columnist Cathy Thomas describes the fruit’s flesh as “gritty goodness” with a semi-soft texture and a sweet-tart taste.

Pineapple guava flowers are elso edible. Brown likes to use them in salads.

Brown said that it takes four to six weeks for the trees he sells to establish. Proper care for the sapling begins with planting the root bulb at or even with the surface so that it doesn’t sink too much with watering. It also helps to dig a well about the plant and to use “deep” watering: watering for an extended period of time with a slow trickle.

During the establishment period the plant requires watering about every other day.

The 5- to 7-year-old shurbs that Brown sells are ready to fruit, with some of them already developing their produce. The fruit begins ripening in mid-July, Brown said, and will continue to ripen into the fall.

Loquat Tree

Horticulturist Suzanne Hetrick of Roger’s Gardens in Corona del Mar grew up in the town of Orange with a loquat tree in her garden.

The evergreen plant, which takes the form of either a large shrub or a small tree, sports waxy dark green leaves, wooly new twigs and small, fuzzy fruits in colors of burnt orange and bright yellow from March to June. It is also incredibly drought-friendly.

Loquats are small, citrusy fruit with tender flesh that bruises easily – which is why they don’t often appear in grocery stores – and a refreshingly tart flavor that turns sweeter and sweeter as the fruit ripens.

A loquat tree from Roger’s usually comes ready to fruit, but takes nine months to a year to get established in the soil via weekly deep watering.

“Once it’s established it’s pretty drought-tolerant,” said Hetrick. “If it’s near anything that gets watered it won’t really need anything else.”

Regardless, Hetrick recommends deep watering the tree once every other week to keep it fruiting.

Pomegranate Tree

“If we can’t water our lawns, pomegranates won’t die; they will still bear fruit,” said Wang of Green Thumb Nursery.

A sapling from Green Thumb may take two or three years to begin fruiting in the fall, but once it starts it won’t stop its annual production even without being watered. Watering does increase yield and promotes growth though, Wang said.

Pomegranate seeds are the edible jewels of the plant. The massive shell of the fruit hides densely packed clusters of the ruby-colored kernels between thin, paperlike membranes, and each crunchy seed packs a juicy burst of tart and sweet.

Fail to pick the fruit, Wang said, and they burst open like a flower and draw in a host of avian friends.

Wang described pomegranate blossoms, the large and fanning white, red and orange blooms of the tree, as “showy.”

His planting suggestion for the tree is the same as his instructions for the goji berry shrub.

Dragonfruit Cactus

Perhaps the most demanding of the plants on this list, dragonfruit cacti require coaxing to develop vertically, and will not fruit otherwise. Still, this cactus may be one of the most ideal plants for a drought-friendly yard.

“You don’t have to water it, the plant won’t die,” said Wang of Green Thumb.

To get the cactus to establish and produce, set the young plant in the soil alongside a second cutting (the plant requires cross pollinization to fruit) and a trellis, two by four or a fence for upward climbing support. Use the same instructions for the goji berry and pomegranate plants in regard to potting mix and hole depth.

The fruit has a bearded pink exterior with spongy-soft inner flesh and a flavor Wang describes as “rich and like a blood orange; beautiful.” The edible inner part is soft and grainy and comes in seed-specked colors of burgundy, yellow, pink and white.

Its flowers, like those of the pineapple guava, are also edible and great for salads.

While the plant will self-pollinate and fruit on its own to some degree, it’s best to manually cross-pollinate the plant’s blossoms for full fruit production. Owners must collect pollen from the nocturnally opening, trumpet-looking flowers of one variety and then gently apply it to the stigma of another.

Despite its need for attention to fruit, dragonfruit cacti promulgate easily.

“Just stick a branch in the ground and it’ll grow,” said Wang.