Botanica Atlanta | Landscape Design, Construction & Maintenance

Perennial beds are best watered with soaker hoses.

A tremendous amount of water is wasted when people water their gardens. Most of the wasted water either goes to run off or is evaporated. Neither of these are any use to the landscape. Picking the right sort of water method for your garden depends on what you are growing.

Overhead Sprinklers

Overhead sprinklers are the worst culprit as they fling water in every direction and on a hot day the tiny droplets evaporate before they reach the ground. However, sprinklers are probably the best method of watering newly laid turf or lawns. To maximize the water getting onto the surface, water very early in the morning when the temperatures are coolest. Cool air temperatures cannot hold as much water as hot air and the addition of sprinkler-driven water will result in much more getting onto the lawn where it is needed.

Overhead sprinklers are not the way to go with herbaceous borders. Getting the leaf surface wet can lead to mildew problems particularly in humid weather. Much less water actually reaches the surface from sprinklers and as the plant needs moisture at the root level, you will need to run the water for much longer.

Soaker Hoses

Soaker hoses are made from a sponge like material that allows water to ?leak? out. If placed carefully and covered with mulch, these will irrigate the surrounding 3 ? 6 inches. This type of hose is great for irrigating a large perennial bed where you want to get water to the roots of many items in the same general area.

Drip Irrigation

This method of watering is great for things that are spread apart. A shrub bed would be the ideal situation where individual shrubs are several feet apart. Each shrub needs water but the area between the shrubs does not. Drip irrigation carries water along a pipe and diverts it to a few discrete areas. One t-junction will send water to each shrub. This makes watering more targeted and thus more useful for the specific landscape.

Whichever sort of landscape you have, you can mix and match the irrigation to suit the area that you need to irrigate.

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