Water
Rainwater harvesting, greywater systems, irrigation, and watershed restoration.
Water Cheatsheet
Quick-reference best practices for harvesting, storing, and managing water sustainably.
Go Deeper
Detailed guides and in-depth articles on water.
Roof Catchment Calculation: Know Your Numbers
How to calculate rainwater yield from your roof area, accounting for runoff coefficients, losses, and annual rainfall to size your harvesting system correctly.
November 10, 2025
Drip Irrigation: Precision Watering at 90% Efficiency
How drip irrigation delivers water directly to root zones at 90 percent efficiency, reducing waste, disease pressure, and labour compared to overhead watering.
November 10, 2025
Drought-Tolerant Species: Beautiful Gardens on Rainfall Alone
A guide to Mediterranean, Australian, and South African plants that thrive in summer-dry climates without supplemental irrigation -- and the design principles that make them flourish.
November 10, 2025
Earthworks and Contouring: Shaping Land to Hold Water
An overview of landscape-scale water management through grading, contouring, and earthwork structures that slow, spread, and sink rainwater.
November 10, 2025
First-Flush Diverters: Clean Water from the Start
How first-flush diverters work to remove dust, bird droppings, pollen, and debris from the initial roof runoff before it enters your rainwater tank.
November 10, 2025
Fog Nets: Harvesting Water from Thin Air
How mesh panels intercept fog droplets to provide clean water in arid coastal and mountain regions where rain is scarce but fog is abundant.
November 10, 2025
Gravity-Fed Systems: No Pump, No Power, No Problem
How to use elevation and gravity to distribute water from tanks to gardens, livestock, and households without any pumps, electricity, or ongoing energy costs.
November 10, 2025
Hydrozoning: Group Plants by Water Needs
How to organise your garden into irrigation zones based on plant water requirements, reducing waste, simplifying maintenance, and growing healthier plants.
November 10, 2025
Mulching for Moisture: Cut Evaporation by 70%
How mulch conserves soil water by shading, insulating, and shielding the soil surface, and which materials work best for moisture retention.
November 10, 2025
Overflow Management: Never Waste a Drop
How to direct tank overflow productively into swales, rain gardens, and infiltration features so that excess water builds landscape resilience instead of causing erosion.
November 10, 2025
Permeable Surfaces: Let Rain Soak In Where It Falls
How replacing impervious paving with permeable alternatives reduces runoff, recharges groundwater, prevents flooding, and turns hard surfaces into water harvesting assets.
November 10, 2025
Ponds and Dams: Landscape-Scale Water Storage
How to design, site, and build ponds and dams that serve as irrigation reserves, wildlife habitat, microclimate regulators, fire defence, and aquaculture systems.
November 10, 2025
Shade Management: Strategic Shade Saves Water
How thoughtful placement of shade trees reduces soil evaporation, lowers plant transpiration stress, cools buildings, and cuts garden water demand by up to fifty percent.
November 10, 2025
Soil Is Your Biggest Water Tank
How organic matter transforms soil into a massive water reservoir, and practical strategies for increasing your soil's water-holding capacity.
November 10, 2025
Surface Catchment: Every Hard Surface Is a Water Source
How to direct runoff from driveways, paths, patios, and other hard surfaces to productive use in gardens, rain gardens, swales, and tree basins.
November 10, 2025
Water Tank Placement: Shade, Elevation, and Gravity
How to choose the optimal position for water storage tanks, balancing shade, elevation for gravity-fed pressure, structural considerations, and overflow management.
November 10, 2025
Tank Sizing: How Much Storage Do You Need?
A practical guide to calculating water storage requirements by matching supply from your roof to demand from your garden, household, and dry-season needs.
November 10, 2025
Underground Cisterns: Invisible, Evaporation-Free Storage
How buried water storage eliminates evaporation, prevents algae, and keeps water cool — a guide to types, installation, costs, and connecting cisterns to catchment and distribution systems.
November 10, 2025
Watering Timing: When You Water Matters as Much as How Much
Why the hour you irrigate dramatically affects water efficiency, plant health, and disease risk -- and how to adjust your schedule across seasons.
November 10, 2025
Wicking Beds: Self-Watering from Below
How wicking beds use a sub-surface water reservoir and capillary action to deliver consistent moisture to plants with near-zero evaporation.
November 10, 2025
Windbreaks: Hedgerows That Save Water
How shelterbelts and hedgerows reduce wind-driven evaporation, lower crop water demand, and provide co-benefits including wildlife habitat, timber, and fruit.
November 10, 2025
Check Dams: Slowing Water, Building Land
How small rock, log, or earth barriers placed across drainage lines slow erosion, capture sediment, infiltrate water, and gradually rebuild degraded gullies.
November 7, 2025
Greywater Systems: Recycling Household Water
How to safely redirect water from showers, sinks, and laundry to irrigate fruit trees and gardens — turning waste into a resource.
October 16, 2025
Keyline Design: Moving Water from Valleys to Ridges
How P.A. Yeomans' keyline system uses the natural shape of the land to redistribute water, build soil, and transform entire properties.
October 14, 2025
Rain Gardens: Beautiful Water Filtration
How to design and build a rain garden that captures stormwater runoff, filters pollutants, recharges groundwater, and creates habitat — all while looking beautiful.
October 12, 2025
Swales on Contour: Passive Water Harvesting
How to design and build contour swales that capture rainwater, recharge groundwater, and turn dry hillsides into productive landscapes.
September 25, 2025
Rainwater Harvesting Basics
Learn the fundamentals of collecting and storing rainwater for irrigation, household use, and groundwater recharge.
June 15, 2025