Water management in your garden

When designing or planting a new garden, access to water is one of the most important considerations. Plants use water in the essential process of photosynthesis and need a steady supply for healthy growth. Take two similar plants and water one regularly and the other only when it starts to wilt. Whilst both will survive, they will develop along completely different lines. For the latter, growth will be bushy and compact whilst the last-minute-watered plant will be spindly and leggy. Too much water is as bad as too little – most plants hate to have their roots sitting in water as this will cause them to rot.

Water Butts and Rainwater collection

Water is a precious resource in terms of both the environment and your finances. It’s important to recycle and re-use where you can, so a water butt is an excellent investment. If you have large areas to water, a number of these can be installed. When several are linked together, water will pass into the next water butt as the one before it becomes full. Attach to guttering or the roof of a greenhouse to collect as much of this freely available resource as possible. How long this supply lasts obviously depends on the weather, but also the way in which your garden is organised.

Basket and pot plant watering systems

Vibrant summer displays can be extremely thirsty, with hanging baskets being among the most prolific guzzlers. Since they are exposed to the wind on all sides, there is a large surface area for evaporation. In the height of summer, they may need to be watered up to three times a day – hard work and also expensive if you are not using recycled water. If you can’t be without your summer baskets, add water-retaining crystals for slow-release moisture and use a Hozelock watering system to provide a regular dowsing. Have you ever noticed that most of the water pours straight through the bottom of the basket onto the ground? Obviously drainage holes are necessary, but it does seem a terrible waste. To solve the problem situate baskets above a flower bed – the lower plants will benefit from the overspill.

Little and often

A drip system is an excellent way to conserve water and offer consistent moisture levels for plants. Since containers need more water, small pipes can be set up to service each individual pot. At Garden4less, we offer automatic Hozelock watering systems that can use collected water from a water butt. To further conserve your supplies, avoid planting in terracotta as it leeches water from the soil and allowing it to evaporate from the exterior surface of the pot.

When to water

Don’t wait until your plants begin to wilt – test the soil to see if it is damp. There are many gadgets which will help with this, but it is far simpler to scrape off the first few centimetres of the soil and take a look yourself! The growing medium should be slightly damp to the touch when the upper layer is removed – if it isn’t then the plant needs watering. Adding a mulch of compost, bark chips or gravel will help to prevent evaporation.