My Climate Change Garden

It has rained every day for the past week here in the South East . Every time I look out of the window the water has been falling from the sky in buckets.

Still, thoughts of the summer hose pipe ban are never far from mine and most gardeners minds at the moment with the growing season well under way.

Bunny Guinness, one of our most respected horticulturalists and an expert on garden design, has written this excellent article in the Daily Telegraph offering an insight into how to adapt your garden to drought conditions. She expresses my thoughts exactly:

“We’re nation of weather watchers, and the gardeners among us are getting extremely concerned. Even if we get a drenching this month, the hosepipe ban in many areas looks set to stay for the summer. It’s time for a rethink about the way we use water in the garden.

Talk to gardeners in Portugal and Spain and they think we are a bit of a joke — they grow amazing vegetable crops and have glorious gardens on far more paltry rainfall than ours. We have got used to sloshing water around and so are worried when we are told not to use sprinklers. But these things can whoosh 1,500-2,000 litres of water into the air per hour. Most evaporates, more trickles to places it is not needed, away from the plants’ roots, and what does fall by a plant will tend to sit on the top and encourage the plants roots to the surface of the soil – exactly what you do not want

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/drought/9207006/Drought-how-to-adapt-in-the-garden.html

Changing the way we garden is not just for 2012.Long periods without rain followed by heavy down pours are now synonomous with our UK weather cycle and are bringing new challenges for gardeners everywhere.

Here are some more ideas to get you thinking about how your garden might cope with future challenging weather:

http://www.globalgardening.org/uploads/pdf/adapting_your_garden.pdf