Our mission: Garden by garden, landscape by landscape, grow a network of habitat for songbirds and pollinators across the Rocky Mountain region and beyond that will sustain these vital species, while saving water for our streams and rivers, and restoring our joy in seeing nature every day. Join Audubon Rockies, Plant Select® and High Country Gardens in promoting wildscaping. Be a habitat hero.

Water-wise Gardening

In the West, water runs uphill toward money.

—Western proverb

Water is one of the most precious commodities in the arid West, where annual precipitation may be as low as two inches (in the lowest deserts), or as high as 80 (in the mountains), but ten to fifteen inches a year is most common. All of the region's rivers, reservoirs and groundwater are in high demand, serving an ever-growing human population, as well as sustaining the region's wild lands and farms.

Knowing how and when to use water most efficiently in your garden and landscape is one of the basic skills of wildscaping and habitat gardening.

What does it mean to be a water-wise gardener? 

First, know your precipitation pattern and totals:

• How much precipitation does your yard or garden get naturally?
• How much has it gotten this week and month? This year?

TIP: Track precipitation by looking in a local newspaper or finding a reporting site on the web at the Community Collaborative Rain Hail Snow tracking site. Better still, get a rain gauge (reliable ones are available for as little as $30), record your own results and join CoCoRaHS if you wish. (It's easy.)

Second, know your site:

• Is your yard level? Sloping?
• Are there hot spots that get a lot of sun? The shady patches that stay moist longer?

TIP: Water or snowmelt are more likely to run off slopes. Using plantings or hardscape running across a slope like water-bars in a road or trail will help slow drainage so it can sink in.

TIP: Hot spots will need watering more often; shady spots less.

Third, check your soil moisture.

TIP: The simplest method is to stick a screwdriver into the soil as far as it'll go. If it's easy to push in, the soil is moist enough that you don't need to water. If you can't push it in very far or if it's hard to push it in, the soil is dry and needs water.

Fourth, know your plants and their needs. A turf grass lawn, for instance, might need an inch every week if it's Kentucky bluegrass. But if it's a more water-thrifty grass mix, it might only need an inch a month. That's a big difference.

TIP: Most native and regionally adapted perennials only need regular watering when they're getting established. After the first year, they only need water if their leaves are still wilted in the morning (plants normally rehydrate during the cooler nighttime temperatures, closing their pores and pulling in water from the soil).

More plants are killed by overwatering than by under watering. —Garden proverb

Fifth, water deeply and less often to encourage plant roots to grow downward where soil moisture persists longer instead of staying at the surface where they dry out quickly.

TIP: Annual plants don't usually have deep roots, but healthy perennial plant roots usually reach two feet deep, and for some species, six or more feet into the soil.

Being water-wise isn't hard.

It simply means paying attention, something gardeners generally do well by nature.