Waterwise gardens

Waterwise Tips

A large portion of our household water use is in our gardens – from garden beds to vegetables patches and lawns.
For easy ways and tips to make your garden waterwise, ensuring they are not only water efficient but also look good all year round read our garden guide.

Run Times

Different types of sprinklers have different watering run times. Please refer to below Sprinkler Watering Run Times guide to determine how long you should run different types of sprinklers.

Catch Cups

Catch cups are specifically designed to collect and measure the amount of water that falls in a given area over a specified period.

As a general rule, your garden only needs 10mm of water on each of your watering days.

A catch cup test is a simple method to ensure that your run times are set up to supply 10mm of water to your garden, and that water is evenly distributed.

Step 1 – Distribute the catch cups evenly around the watering zone you wish to test. Ensure that each cup is placed at least 1 meter away from the nearest sprinkler.

Step 2 – Turn on your sprinklers and measure the time it takes for the catch cups to collect water up to a depth of 10mm.

Step 3 – Once you have your reading, adjust the run time on your irrigation controller based on how long it took to fill the cups to a depth of 10mm.

You can get your free catch cups from Think Water Busselton, Nutrien Ag Solutions Busselton or the Busselton Water Admin building located at 1 Fairbairn Dr.

Irrigation

After installation of a waterwise garden, the biggest water costing habit is the amount we water our gardens and how we’re watering them. Installing the right kind of irrigation can help you implement waterwise behaviours and save you money long term.

Install an Automatic Irrigation System
Automatic irrigation controllers are programmable electronic timers which switch irrigation stations on and off at specified times (in summer these should be the two allocated watering days).

More ways you can save water in your garden

Consider installing other water saving technologies – these can be inexpensive devices that are easily fitted to most automatic irrigation systems, and can save water by irrigating base on weather readings.

• Evaporation sensors and weather stations are sensors that will adjust the irrigation cycle based on a mixture of the current climatic conditions and plant’s estimated water demand
• Rain sensors disconnect the automatic irrigation system controller temporarily when a specific amount of rainfall has occurred
• Soil moisture sensors modify the pre-set irrigation run time based on the amount of moisture in the soil

Information provided by GeoCatch: Bay OK Garden Guide – A simple garden guide for Geographe Bay – Eagle Bay to Dalyellup.