NW Gardens: Ways to conserve water are beginning to soak in

DROUGHT OR NO drought, gardeners are gardening. But even if we end up having a rainy summer, our awareness of water management in the garden has been raised, and that's not a bad thing.

When you put some thought into how you use water in the garden, you can find ways to save it.


		Steve Shelton
	These eight 1,500-gallon cisterns are to be buried in the back yard of a Madrona home and used for plant and landscape irrigation.

Catching rainfall is one means of water use that has caught the attention of gardeners. This could mean acquiring a few rain barrels to hook up to the downspouts.

You can line your back garden with rain barrels or keep them in a row along the garage, but it may be difficult to catch and store enough water to last a whole summer. However, the point now is to have a garden that isn't water-needy.

The job that rain barrels have done the best is to make us aware of water and how much we use. That, and the fact that it is handy to have even a small reservoir at hand occasionally.

But other gardeners are looking for bigger catchment methods. The crews at Exteriorscapes have been busy installing cisterns in Puget Sound-area gardens.

At the 2004 Northwest Flower & Garden Show, designer Cameron Scott built an impressive above-ground cistern that was as much entertainment and garden art as it was a water-saver. Water raced down a trough filled with colorful, recycled tumbled glass as if it were on a Matchbox car track. Water was handy for those plants that needed it on the spot.

But it did take up a considerable amount of space, so Scott found his clients asking for cisterns that could work their catchment magic out of sight.

At a Madrona home, the company has installed a series of eight underground cisterns, each holding 1,500 gallons of water. Rain from the roof is channeled through a sand filter to remove debris and then into the cisterns.

How much rain is caught depends on how much rain falls, of course. But there is a formula to help you figure out how much you could catch, and it measures out to roughly 600 gallons of water per inch of rain that falls on a 1,000-square-foot roof.

The cisterns are made from high-density, food-grade polyethylene. When it comes time to use the water, an electric pump inside the tank sends the water to the irrigation system for the garden planted above. Smart irrigation systems keep track of whether it has rained, so the garden doesn't get a double dose of water.

Unattended automatic irrigation systems are often the culprit when it comes to wasting water. Clogged heads, mindless timers and distracted homeowners lead to gushing water, drowned plants and wet sidewalks. But there are watering systems that are a benefit to the garden and that can lower your water use.

Soaker hoses and drip irrigation are two ways to water the garden or pots economically. Instead of a lot of water at one time -- which is often lost to a plant's root system because it runs off the top of the soil -- these methods of watering provide a little bit of water over a long period of time.

Drop by drop application means that the water infiltrates the soil and has time to spread throughout a plant's root system, where it is taken up slowly. Pair one of these systems with a good mulch in the garden, and you've doubled your ability to lower water use and encourage a healthy garden.

Use an on-the-spot watering system in a container garden, and you'll have beautiful plants without the seesaw regimen of either flooding a pot or letting it get too dry.

Tina Dixon designs, plants and maintains myriad container gardens through her business, Plants a la Cart. She finds that a system of soaker hoses works best for both gardener and garden.

Soaker hoses, usually made from recycled tires, sweat the water out. How far water spreads laterally in the garden from a soaker hose depends on the type of soil -- the water doesn't spread as wide in sandy soil as it does in heavier clay soil. But in a pot, you're in charge of the soil type, and the water is confined, so you can let the hose sweat long enough to get adequate moisture to the root systems of the plants.

Dixon runs a quarter-inch hose to the pot garden, which then branches out into the pots where quarter-inch soaker hose takes over. She runs the hose along the inside perimeter of the pot and then moves it in 4 inches to run it around again.

Drip systems are one more way of applying water directly where it's needed. A drip system is a line of small black tubing into which emitters are placed -- you just punch them in.

The emitters are placed directly over root zones at intervals that depend on the density of planting and the soil type. Drip systems can be made to turn corners by using elbow joints.

Cheryl Petterson both installs and teaches about drip systems through her business, Dialogue Design. She encourages gardeners to visit Bradner Park Gardens, where they can see drip in action -- slow action though it is.

Soakers and drips may be visible early in a garden or container's life, and the new garden over an underground cistern system may look sparse at the start, but soon the plants grow to disguise the devices, and what you see is a beautiful, water-efficient garden.

Resources
for gardeners

Find more information on efficient water use from these Web sites and businesses:

Drip systems -- eartheasy.com

Saving water in the garden and the house -- www.savingwater.org

Catchment water systems -- www.arcsa-usa.org

Bradner Gardens -- Situated near the Interstate 90 lid, at 29th Avenue South and South Grand in Seattle. Information: www.cityofseattle.net/parks/parkspaces/bradnergardens.htm

Exteriorscapes -- Julie Hauser, 206-396-0846

Plants a la Cart -- Tina Dixon; stredson@aol.com; 425-481-2194 or cell 206-930-2194

Dialogue Design -- Cheryl Petterson, 206-725-5015

Rain barrel
source

Rain barrels are sold through nurseries and catalogs everywhere, but there's a local company that makes and sells them along with assisting people with disabilities in their search for employment.

AtWork!, an Issaquah-based company, produces rain barrels from recycled food-grade barrels. The downspout barrel ($65.26) holds up to 60 gallons of water; series barrels ($42.28 each) attach to the downspout barrel and let you save even more. The barrels are screened to keep out debris and mosquitoes.

AtWork! will deliver an order of barrels ($7.50 delivery fee for first barrel, $5 for each after that, plus 40 cents a mile round trip) or you can pick them up from 690 N.W. Juniper St., Issaquah; phone 425-274-4000; www.atwork-issaquah.com

AtWork! is an organization that provides work opportunities for people with disabilities and also helps businesses create employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

Marty Wingate, a Seattle-based Master Gardener, has a master's degree in urban horticulture and is the author of two garden books. She can be contacted at: martywin@earthlink.net.

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