Tips to Install and Use Water-Saving Features in Your Landscaping
Posted on: 3 June 2019
The design and planning of your yard's landscaping will determine its appearance and growth and its ability to improve or detract from your home's value. Along with planning attractive landscaping, you and your landscaper will need to consider how you will keep it watered for the optimal health of your vegetation. Here are some options you can add into your outdoor landscaping plan to maximize your yard's water use to best keep your landscaping maintained while you prevent water loss.
Add a Water Collection Feature
When the weather turns wet, the moisture that runs from your roof and down the gutters and downspouts can be heavy enough to seep into your basement and cause moisture damage. But when you collect the runoff, you keep it from saturating the soil around your home and leading to potential basement leaks, and you can also use it as irrigation water for your landscaping. Talk to your landscaper about adding a rain barrel beneath your roof's downspouts to screen, collect, and hold the water until you want to use it to water specific areas of your landscaping beds.
There are many attractive styles of collection basin rain barrels to choose from to add visual interest to your landscaping. Your rain barrel will have a nozzle at its base, which you can connect to a hose or a drip irrigation system to water your flower beds or other shrubbery or bushes. Use its water to water any areas when the days are hot and dry.
Properly Place Drip Irrigation
Drip irrigation or micro-irrigation is a great way to provide water to your landscaping vegetation, trees, and shrubbery. This type of irrigation delivers water through tubes directly to the base of your plants where they need the water. This watering method loses little water to evaporation and virtually none to wind. In fact, this type of irrigation uses 20 to 50 percent less water than a traditional sprinkler system would use to water the same space of bed landscaping.
The water used in a drip irrigation system is efficient in other ways than reducing water loss. In addition to these water savings, the water will drip slowly into the soil to saturate over a longer period of time and result in deep watering and healthier plants. And because the water only drips onto the base of your plants, you don't put water into soil void of plants, which can prevent and reduce weed growth in your bedding areas.
Install Low-Flow Sprinklers
Sprinklers on a programmable timer are a great way to keep your yard's lawn lush and green through the heat of summer. But the type of sprinklers you choose for your yard's sprinklers can affect how you need to water and how often, and how much water the sprinklers can potentially waste.
Water loss can occur from sprinklers that create excess misting or spray too high into the air, especially when the winds are strong. Plan with your landscaper to select and install low-flow sprinklers. This type of sprinkler delivers water aerially in small spinning streams and without causing mist.
Be sure you run your low-flow sprinklers for a longer duration to deliver the same amount of water. But because the sprinklers deliver water slowly, there is less water lost to runoff and evaporation and the water has more time to seep more deeply into the soil. The deeper the water seeps, the deeper your lawn's roots will grow and the healthier your lawn will be.
Discuss your irrigation options with your residential landscaping service to select those best for your yard, climate, and water conservation needs.
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