We can all work on water
REMEMBER when you could rely on rain to do your watering for you? Not any more.And now we can’t take an unlimited supply of piped water for granted either.
Water meters, hot summers and hosepipe bans are a sign of the times and lawn sprinklers are decidedly non-PC. Rightly so, they run away with roughly 120 gallons (550 litres) of good drinking water per hour.
There’s a great deal you can do to cut down your use of water in the garden and fashion is on your side. Instead of a traditional, bowling green-style lawn, many gardeners are going for the natural look. By allowing the grass to grow slightly longer than usual and encouraging drought-resistant clovers and trefoils – which don’t turn yellow when they are short of water – grass stays a lot greener in dry conditions.
Instead of mass-planting annuals in flower beds, limiting them to containers reduces water consumption. Besides saving hours of work in the garden, you can minimise evaporation by mulching between plants each spring, which also cuts weeding.
If you’re planning a new garden it’s easy to design one that’s fashionable and colourful without needing a lot of watering. Go for a flowering, meadow-style garden with drought-tolerant perennials and ornamental grasses, or a Mediterranean garden of evergreen herbs and aromatics.
AS FOR vegetables and salads, forget large-scale growing in favour of a few small but very intensively planted beds filled with deep, rich compost.You still have to water but it all goes where it counts. There’s no waste.
But just think of all the perfectly good water that goes down the drain every day.The average bath uses 40 gallons – that’s about 20 watering cans or 180 litres – and each time you rinse a teacup, lather your hands or wash a lettuce, there’s another two pints (one litre) gone. So why not recycle it? It’s not all that difficult to do, once you get into the habit.
For a start, use a plastic bowl for all of your rinsing and washing-up, so you can tip it on the garden afterwards. A drop of washing-up liquid or ordinary soap won’t do any harm, even to young plants or seedlings, but leave very dirty or greasy water for the more rugged plants such as trees and shrubs and don’t even think about re-using water containing bleach or cleaning products.
Bath water is brilliant for recycling but it takes a bit more planning.Years ago, people carried the contents of the bath out in buckets or siphoned it out through the window with a hose. But frankly, it’s too much trouble.
Put in a diverter, which intercepts water from the downpipe and redirects it into a plastic water butt, from where you can draw it off later.You’ll need to raise it about 18in (45cm) above the ground so that when you want to fill your watering can, there’s room to stand it underneath the tap at the base.
The beauty of using a diverter is that there’s no overflowing water butts – when it is full, the device automatically redirects any more water back down the drain. But the enthusiastic water recycler can connect several water butts together so every drop is saved.
But what’s particularly worth doing is saving rainwater. Did you know that roughly 20,000 gallons land on the roof of your house each year? Even a light shower in summer is enough to top up your water butts.
Rainwater is unchlorinated and naturally soft, perfect for plants. It’s far better than the stuff that comes out of a tap for watering lime-haters such as rhododendrons, camellias and blueberries, especially when they are growing in tubs and need regular watering.
Rainwater is also the best kind for topping up your pond as it’s free from nitrates and other chemicals and it’s better for pot plants and seedlings in the greenhouse. So you’ll be doing yourself and the garden a favour by saving water and if you’re on a meter, you can almost watch the pennies pile up.