Hosepipes and health

SIR – A hosepipe ban is imminent in the South of England. Is this the right answer to our water shortages and environmental crisis?

A blanket hosepipe ban will lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of plants and trees in gardens. We need these plants for our own survival. Would it not be better to impose water usage restrictions on people instead?

Isn’t the preservation of our green spaces key to our environmental survival, as well as our mental health? Kate Chamberlain

London SE22

SIR – Are you telling me that, if I phone to report that my neighbour is watering his garden with a hose, the police will come out, when they didn’t even respond after I rang to tell them the house opposite us had been broken into by vandals, who were throwing items out of windows?

Sandra Crawley

Shanklin, Isle of Wight

SIR – We have 10 water butts strategically placed outside our house. During the recent heatwave, we watered our flowerbeds and pots as necessary, but not the lawn. By the end of that hot spell, none of the butts was empty, although some were less than half full.

Two days of rain, followed by Cornish mizzle, have successfully refilled the water butts to overflowing.

My parents bought a house on a new estate in 1952. Every house had a store outside the back door, which was topped by a large metal water tank, fed by a downpipe from the house roof. Water could be taken directly from this to the garden.

Why are all new homes not now built with some means of collecting and storing rainfall?

Anne Hanley

Gunnislake, Cornwall