It’s finally arrived … the hosepipe ban that is.
How to cope with this? The irony is, of course, that we’ve had quite a lot of rain since the ban came into force on 22nd July. Nonetheless, when the need arises, lots of hoicking watering cans or buckets about is the old-fashioned way, but you might consider fitting a timed “seeping” watering system, which directs water to your plants in a much more precise manner than by hosepipe. These are exempted by Thames Water from the ban – exemption 14 runs: “Watering a garden, including watering plants on domestic or other non-commercial premises using an approved drip or trickle irrigation watering system, fitted with a pressure reducing valve and a timer, that are not handheld, that place water drip by drip directly onto the soil surface or beneath the soil surface without any surface run off or dispersion of water through the air using a jet or mist”.
[please refer to thameswater.co.uk/help/water-supply-and-drought-update/legal-notice for all details of exemptions]
I shall also repeat the usual advice for dealing with these challenging conditions. Water your plants (as above), but then mulch them with something like ornamental bark, coconut coir, or sheep wool felt (new to me, but looks promising). These will all help to retain moisture.
Meanwhile, plants are unlikely to keel over all at once, so be vigilant, keeping an especially wary eye on recently-planted shrubs and herbaceous plants (annuals bought from garden centres often have particularly small root systems), especially in sunnier areas of your plot, and especially anything in a pot (by the way, plastic dries out more slowly than terracotta – I have an acanthus, which should cope well with drought, in a large clay pot, and it’s needed rescuing twice already). Hanging baskets may need a watering-can’s worth twice a day, and plants that enjoy shade may also suffer unduly, so check ferns, hydrangeas, camellias, and the like (I have a huge rhododendron in a huge pot, which I fear may not survive, but my ferns and hydrangeas are hanging in there, and my fuchsias look serenely happy, even though one is in full sun: it’s a large plant some nine years old, and its well-established root base is no doubt questing far and wide for water).
Hosepipe bans have come and gone before, but it’s likely they will be more frequent in the future, so perhaps also plan long-term by using more plants that naturally cope with drought, such as euphorbias, verbascum (mullein), eryngium (sea holly), salvias, cistus (rock rose), phlomis (Jerusalem sage), ornamental grasses, and succulents. We will probably still get our fair share of winter wet, and some of these plants are not utterly hardy in Britain. Freezing water in the soil kills far more plants than mere cold, so ensure good drainage when planting, mitigating the Oxford clay that lurks in Eynsham’s gardens with plenty of grit and open “multi-purpose” style compost added to the planting hole.
Even with this year’s drought-like months, we’ re likely still to get around 30inches/750 millimetres of rain this year, perhaps a little less. Spare a thought for gardeners in Las Vegas (average annual rainfall about 4 inches/100 millimetres), Cairo (1 inch/25 millimetres), or Lima, the capital of Peru, which gets about a quarter-of-an-inch (6 mm) per year. Even drier is the Atacama desert, a thousand kilometres (600 miles) further south in northern Chile, which often receives no rain whatsoever for several years. Rare precipitation leads to a sudden blooming of the desert, now enshrined in the country’s newest national park, the “Desierto Florido”, where up to 200 species of plants rush into flower in a matter of weeks.