Saving water in your Backyard Wildlife Habitat!What many householders do not realise is that the simple act of savingwater in the garden, can be the biggest contribution they can make to water conservation. And the easiest! Sprinklers and hoses left on for hours at time use vast amounts of water, and if used through the heat of the day, evaporate quickly anyway. A hose left on for one hour can use 1000 liters of water!Another advantage of planting natives is that native plants don't use as much water...not nearly as much as introduced plants. There are many other ways you can reduce water use in the garden, and save lots of dollars on your water bill, without putting down concrete, or filling the yard up with stones and cacti! There are six basic tenets of a watersaving garden. *Group plants according to their needs!* *Limit or remove the lawn!* *Irrigate efficiently!* *Mulch!* *Maintenance!* *Using grey water!* * Wise use of drought tolerant native plants!*
If you've moved into another house recently, and your garden is already established, it will pay to draw a plan. There may be some things you can relocate to a more shaded area. A fence or carport can be planted with a native fast growing creeper, to provide shade and shelter from drying wind. Putting plants with similar water requirements together is a very smart strategy. Why waste expensive water on plants that don’t need it! If you put the more water loving plants together in an area that is sheltered and partly shaded, that even further reduces your water use. To save water, try to keep plants that use lots of water to a minimum, and of course use lots of mulch.
Lawns can use huge amounts of water. Somebody has calculated that 80% of water used in a garden is used on the lawn. In most houses, a front lawn is never used anyway. It could easily be replaced with native shrubs, trees, and drought tolerant ground cover plants. The side lawns could also be reviewed. Do you really need lawn there, who uses it? What about a flagstone path and some native flowers or shrubs? That would save lots of water!
 Above, if you can entice one of these little guys into your garden you've done very well...a blue winged pitta!
In the back yard, lawn that is used as a pathway could be replaced with a proper dedicated path, from flagstones or bricks, or concrete slab stones. If you minimise the lawn, you will dramatically reduce your water use, virtually overnight, and your mower petrol and maintenance bill as well! There are also low water tolerant native ground cover plants to consider for a lawn, and some native grasses make great lawn areas too!
If you have decided to put your plants into groups depending on water requirements you have already made significant step towards water efficiency, but you can do better. Avoid wasting water by allowing sprinklers to flow onto paths or areas that do not need watering. Water the roots and the ground, rather than the leaves. Don’t water trees or shrubs until it is necessary, because it can lead to weakened root structure. Trees and shrubs have roots which reach out to search for water, and that anchors the plant to the ground. Over watering encourages the roots to stay close to the plant, which can make it unstable. If you delay watering your plants and watch the canopy carefully, you will find that after a week or so the tip growth will begin to wilt. This is the point where it is starting to run short of water. Allowing plants to begin wilting will induce slight stress, which in turn will reduce the plant’s vigour and significantly reduce overall water use. However, early stressing will not cause serious problems to your plants. Before watering always dig down through the mulch to a couple of inches into the soil, to make sure you do really need to water. Its surprising just how much water that mulching can save from evaporation. To really save water, water at night, early morning, or late afternoon. Night time is best, but some plants that are likely to have fungal disease problems are better watered in the morning, as the water doesn’t stay on the leaves as long. Always try to water the roots rather than the leaves. Quite heavy pruning of trees and shrubs in Spring will prevent them from using so much water, but then the birds prefer bushy plants to hide in. A hose is more efficient in terms of water use, than a sprinkler, and if you have a trigger on the end, you can turn it of easily when moving around the garden. Micro spinklers are not bad, but the most water efficient device in the garden is a dripper system, which puts water exactly where it is needed -- at the roots of the plant! Some of the latest soaker hoses which ‘sweat’ beads of water along the whole hose are pretty good too, and convenient because they can be moved around.
 Above, native violets make a great ground cover!
To save water, ‘grey water’ from the shower, bath, and washing machine are often used in the garden. If you use ‘grey’ water, you should also use a biodegradable detergent. Well, you should anyway, because if you are not using ‘grey’ water in the garden, it is going into creeks, rivers, and eventually the oceans. Grey water can easily be piped into a native flower garden bed. Finally, don’t forget to save rainwater. You can get drums, tanks and all manner of devices to go under down pipes and collect rainwater. You need to ensure a cover is on the drum, or at least covered in mosquito netting. Many people on bore water that is hard, mineralised, or a bit salty, use rainwater for drinking purposes, so they have large tanks to save water. However if you are on town water, saving rainwater to use in your garden will save you lots of money on your water bills! Mulches There are many different mulches you can use, but to be effective it should be about three inches thick. Pine bark, cotton waste, sugar cane waste, wood chips, hay and straw are all used with success. Obviously pine bark and wood chips are more visually pleasing in an area which is seen by the public, or visitors, and better for wildlfie, but straw and hay are okay everywhere else. If you have native trees and shrubs, leaves will soon cover the mulch anyway. If you have a big garden, an electric mulcher is great, and you will be able to chip broken branches and other garden trimmings, which make great mulch. Chunky mulch is better for wildlife, because small cretures can hide under it. Many local councils stockpile their wood chipping, and it is often available free, or very cheap to ratepayers. It makes a very good mulch, although it's often full of weed seeds. Lawn clippings are not good mulch. They compact and form an impenetrable barrier that water can’t penetrate. Newspaper is the same. Both these should be composted first, then they can be used. Just a word of warning though, when using mulch keep it a couple of inches away from the trunks of shrubs and trees, because it can cause the trunk to rot if bunched up around it.
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