2019 Conference Climate Change & Gardens 12. Mark Roberts

Looking after glorious gardens and healthy landscapes – Mark Roberts

The National Trust Water Strategy is focused on looking after what the Trust already has. Natural flood management is key at the landscape scale, realising a number of ecosystem services above and beyond flood management including improved quality of habitats and biodiversity. Understanding predicted future water demand is also important, particularly given recent events (hot summer in 2018 and low level of groundwater recharge over winter 2018/9 – drought in 2019?). While mains are needed for drinking water, could non-potable supplies be used for non-drinking needs?

The National Trust sees peak water use in hot weather and this is due to water use in the gardens. Some gardens,

however, do not have mains connections and hence need to adapt their horticulture accordingly – maximising rainwater storage (which takes full advantage of episodic rainfall events) whilst also reducing the need for watering (such as use of ‘no dig’ methods which use 50-60% less water). These measures could be adopted in other gardens. Currently, mains water use is being monitored across properties to ascertain levels of leakage (from pipes, toilet cisterns etc.), patterns of use, operation of existing infrastructure (e.g. urinals that automatically flush at intervals – even at night when not is

use). This is key to then changing water use behaviour and developing infrastructure to reduce mains water use or replace it (e.g. water reclamation, rainwater harvesting or even boreholes). Businesses can now look around for mains water suppliers and so offers a financial incentive to take an active approach to water management in the garden.