Water harvesting

Harvesting Water

Harvesting water is one of the most important things you can do to make your garden sustainable. By recycling water within our spaces, we can create a closed-loop system, which means we won't have to take water straight from the tap.

Why Harvest Water Rather Than Just Running the Tap?

Treating water so that it meets a safe drinking standard requires a lot of energy. Around 60 per cent of the water we use in the UK is cleaned to drinking-standard quality, but used for other things that do not require it. Our plants don't need drinking-standard water, in fact rainwater is actually better for them. By harvesting rainwater, we're taking pressure off public drainage systems, which are already suffering from more extreme weather caused by climate change.

How to Capture Water to Feed Our Garden

There are many ways to capture water in your garden, here are some of the most common:

1. Attach water butts to the guttering of any available buildings, including houses, sheds and outbuildings. You can use a plastic water butt or even recycle a wooden barrel that's been used for winemaking.

1. Create a pond – while you won't be harvesting water from it, a pond will create a diverse habitat and increase the biodiversity of your space.

1. Dig a swale – this is especially good if you have a sloping garden. To make one, dig a ditch and then put the soil you remove in front of it. The water travelling down the slope will then go into the ditch and be stopped in its tracks by the soil. The water will then infiltrate the soil slowly, instead of simply running off and away.

1. Mulch – mulching reduces evaporation, and soil with a high organic matter content will hold a lot more liquid.

1. Grow plants that act as living mulches – broad leafed and crawling plants will provide shade so that water doesn't evaporate as easily.

Incorporating Water Harvesting Into Your Garden Design

It's a good idea to install your water butt at the end of summer, so that it can collect water during the autumn and winter months, ready for use next summer.

However, you don't want to leave your water to get stagnant or for the water butt to fill up with debris, such as leaves, so it's a good idea to use it regularly. You might want to place your water butt near your vegetable patch if you can, so you won't have to carry the water too far.

Try to Calculate How Much Water You Need to Harvest and Plan Around That

By thinking about how you use water in your garden throughout the year, you'll be able to work out how much you need to capture.

You can use rainwater for anything in your garden, such as filling ponds and watering crops and ornamentals. Rainwater is also great for watering seedlings as it hasn't been chlorinated like tap water.

With hosepipe bans on the rise, having a good supply of rainwater means that our crops won't suffer in the drier months.

Your Assignment

Where could you harvest water in your garden?