One of the difficulties when setting up any new garden is how to irrigate it. Most of us live outside the ‘perfect area’ for the plants we are growing (with regards rainfall) and therefore often need to consider adding supplementary water. This can be done simply with a watering can or garden hose, or in a more sophisticated manner using computers & solenoids. Each of these solves the same essential problem, and each presents its own solution/difficulties.

At TSH the area of irrigation is a very important point as the property has almost pure sand at its base, and therefore very little water holding capacity. Working out how to efficiently apply supplementary water, and increase this holding capacity, is probably the most significant process undertaken in this garden.

Which leads me to a very important point... efficiency! It is vital that all gardeners treat available fresh water as a very precious resource as we have so little of it available. A rough estimate is that only 0.02% of all the available water on Earth is available as fresh water in lakes, rivers, inland seas and the like (see the Water Cycle). In other words, for every 10 litres of water that is present on earth only 2 millilitres is freely available fresh water... and there are lots of calls, apart from gardening, on that two 2mls. So whatever we do we need to do it efficiently, and effectively, and not squander this valuable resource.

This category of the TSH website will consider the various irrigation technologies that are employed at TSH, and elsewhere.