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Water, Water Everywhere By Janice F. Booth
“Into each life a little rain must fall,” asserts the old adage. And we who putter in the garden are well aware of the vicissitudes of water on and in our gardens. I thought we might consider for a few moments the good, the bad, the beautiful, and (if we must) the ugly facts of water in the garden. There are three ways of considering water in the garden: as rain that does or does not fall, artificial sources of water for our garden, and water as a lovely feature in the garden. Let’s begin with Nature’s way: rainfall. It’s mid-summer now, and rain comes and goes at will, gentle or heavy, spare or lavish, reliably or sporadically. Like me, you’ve probably learned to protect your garden’s resident plants and shrubs from downpours and droughts with a few gardener’s tricks. You may have redirected the water from your downspouts with flexible hose or dug graceful, pebble-lined trenches to guide rainwater where it’s needed, away from foundations and fragile roots. Perhaps you’ve installed eco-friendly barrels to collect rainwater for use in drier times.
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And now, what can we do to compensate for the lack of rain? We water! For those invariably dry, hot days of summer, you may have installed soaker hoses just beneath the top soil. If you have soaker hoses, you know how effective they are at helping precious water reach the roots of thirsty plants. You may have installed timers on those hoses, or any of your watering devices. These hose timers come in two basic types; manual or automatic. Manual timers are set each time you wish to use the soaker or sprinkler; you turn the dial to 15 or 30 minutes and the timer does the rest. The more sophisticated auto-timers allow you to set a pattern of daily and even weekly timing cycles for watering. Either type of timer will take a lot of the annoyance out of watering the garden when Nature won’t. A few words more about soaker hoses and sprinklers, if I may. If you don’t mind a bit of extra preparation, soaker hoses are practical and ecologically responsible watering solutions. The installation requires digging shallow trenches where the hose or tubing is then laid. A light layer of soil then covers the hose, restoring the flowerbeds to their tidy beauty. (Leaving the soaker hose on the surface thwarts its effectiveness since some of the water may squirt up into the air and the water that settles into the soil has further to go to reach the thirst plant roots.) If this installation sounds a bit daunting, consult with your landscaper who’ll help plan the most effective layout plan. As for sprinklers, they’re best used on open spaces, such as your lawn. (You won’t want soaker-hose trenches dug beneath your lush, green turf, I’m sure.) Broad sprinklers will supplement nature’s
