Abstract: Water and fertilization management are the main agronomic decisions during artificial cultivation of Hemarthria compressa. Water treatments, including normal water supply, and light and moderate drought, and fertilization treatments, including no fertilizer, low, moderate and high fertilizer rates, were included in a pot experiment to study the effects of water and fertilizer and their interaction on the growth, yield, quality and some physiological indexes of H. compressa. The proline content of leaves was increased by reduced water supply, but was unaffected by fertilizer treatment. Under moderate drought without fertilizer, the proline content was the highest and the growth of H. compressa was the lowest, showing that the drought effect was serious, which indicates that proline accumulation is not always sufficient to overcome drought exposure effects in plants. Fertilizer resulted in increased relative water content of leaves, nitrate reductase activity, root vitality, uptake of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, and soil nutrient availability, which mitigated drought damage, and improved yield and quality. The light drought increased root:shoot ratio, the content of nitrogen and potassium, while there was no significant decrease in chlorophyll content, nitrate reductase activity, the phosphorus content of the plant and soil available nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Thus, the light drought with high fertilizer provided the best growth, yield and quality; whereas all these parameters were adversely affected in the various water treatments with no fertilizer or low fertilizer. To conclude, frequent short-term drought had no significant effect on the yield and quality, providing adequate fertilizer was applied. These findings may be relevant to achieving high yield and quality in artificial cultivation of H. compressa in the Three Gorges Reservoir area.