Over the years we have hosted many thousands of garden visitors and inevitably one develops a sort of patter. “You will notice our climate is very soft,” I say. “We never get that hot but we never get very cold either. High sunshine hours and regular rain twelve months of the year, including summer rain. If we get three weeks without rain, we start talking drought.” Hah! When did we last get a good, steady rain which soaked well into the ground? Considerably longer than three weeks ago. And we are talking fairly serious drought now.

Given that we earn our living from growing plants which require irrigation, we are at least lucky to have a reliable water supply. When we had a bore drilled well over twenty years ago, I recall it being one of the most stressful periods of my life. That was back in the olden days when it wasn’t easy to borrow money. You actually had to have some equity and be able to prove that you could meet the repayments and the then Rural Bank would not loan us the money to put in an irrigation system until we had found water. We had scraped together enough money to get the hole drilled but of course you pay wet or dry. In other words, if we had the site wrong and they drilled down but failed to find water, we were still going to have to hand over our hard earned $4500. It was a very long ten days and, as luck would have it (though we did have a somewhat more cynical take on it at the time) when Mark told the drillers we only had enough money for one more day, water magically appeared. Whatever, it is a supply that has stood us in very good stead in the decades since.

We have never irrigated the garden however, and I am strongly of the view that in these changing times, putting in ornamental gardens which rely on irrigation is unjustifiable and unsustainable. This year’s drought may be a one-off or it may be a taste of things to come. But the global shortage and increasing unpredictability of fresh water is hitting home at such a local level that gardeners should be considering where they and their passions fit in to the bigger picture.

We don’t expect to lose much at all in the garden and certainly no big trees or shrubs. The hydrangeas are wilting and other plants are visibly stressed. We are getting some early autumn colour as deciduous trees are deciding to shed some of their foliage early to reduce moisture loss. But this being Taranaki, we are confident that the autumn rains will come in due course and at least the cooler nights and increasing dew helps reduce overall moisture loss.

Vegetable gardeners will be continuing to water and the quick growth and high moisture content of many edible crops mean that if you don’t water, you won’t get a harvest. But short of ripping out your ornamental plants and putting in succulents and desert plants which are designed to withstand long dry periods, what can you do in the ornamental garden? The answer is pretty well nothing at the moment except to make plans for when the rains return.

Well cultivated soil holds water better in dry periods. In fact, tilling the vegetable garden to a fine tilth and letting it form a dry layer on top is a time honoured method of conserving water. We are pretty lucky in most of Taranaki and Wanganui that we do not have the nasty clay soils that afflict much of the country. Clay tends to be waterlogged in winter and to set like concrete is summer. Most of us have soils which are pretty easy to cultivate. So if your garden soils look compacted and you have developed the habit of chipping out a hole to place new plants, make a resolution to put more effort into cultivating the ground. Every good gardener knows that the state of the soil is the single most important ingredient to gardening. Even novice gardeners may have noticed that they buy a superb looking plant, bung it in the ground and it starts to go off in a most disappointing manner. The cause is usually bad planting technique.

So step one is to cultivate the soil well. Adding compost, humus or well rotted animal manure helps to add goodness and texture and is a great deal more sustainable and environmentally sound than adding artificial fertilisers. After all, humans have been gardening and growing crops that way for thousands of years, long before the merits of phosphates and nitrates were proven in the nineteenth century, triggering the rush from gardeners and farmers for old bones to crush for fertiliser.

Step two is to plan for planting trees and shrubs in autumn, rather than spring. Most of us get inspired by pretty spring plants but it really is better to get them into the ground in autumn so they can establish and get their roots out before the threat of summer dry. But don’t be tempted this year to start planting until we get rain. The calendar may tell us it is autumn but the conditions are not yet singing to the same tune.

Step three is to mulch. And mulch. And then mulch some more. It is too late to mulch when the soil is already dry because the mulch will act as a barrier to water entering the soil as well as to slowing evaporation. You need to mulch when the moisture levels are already high, in winter or early spring. We mulch with compost and since the advent of our prized chipper, we now have the shredded waste from that too. You can mulch with pea straw (an expensive option here because we don’t grow peas locally), pine needles, granulated bark, calf shed wood shavings or any similar material. You want it pretty sterile so you are not introducing weed seeds. The mulch retains moisture in the soil, adds texture to it and some mulches will add nutrients. It also makes a garden look a great deal better than bare soil. The birds tend to find it appealing but rather than moaning about them scattering the mulch, look upon it as beneficial all round. Not only does it keep bird life active in the garden, but they are digging in the mulch because it is rich in natural insect life.

Step four is my new hobby horse. Plant trees. If you are worried about the sun, plant deciduous trees which will give shade in summer but not block the precious winter sun. I used to think that if everybody planted one good tree in their lifetime in a spot where it would have every chance of growing to maturity, the world would be a better place. Now I think that planting many trees is a better way to go. If you drive to work, or insist on driving a gas guzzling large car or urban tractor, enjoy motor sports (there is an oxymoron for you), fly internally or overseas or (horrors), all of the preceding, then you should be planting many more trees to compensate for your excessive carbon hoofprint.