Every little bit helps when it comes to water conservation

13 November 2012

Waipa District Council is doing its bit to conserve water in the lead up to summer.

A professional development opportunity for parks operator John Maxted is helping to conserve water at Te Awamutu's rose gardens and helping to achieve the council's goal of being an environmental and cultural champion.

John, who has worked at the council for 32 years, is applying water budgets to the council's $30,000 investment in the rose plants as part of a course he is completing in irrigation management.

John says one of the interesting things is that soil has a water tank. This means while we may think the grounds are dry and the plants need watering, that may not necessarily be true.

The science involves digging holes in the garden to determine the soil type and water holding capacity, the rooting depth of the roses, measuring the output of the water sprinklers in the garden and then calculating how much rain there has been.

That gives John the water budget figure and he then knows how much water needs to be put back into the garden to ensure optimum moisture levels.

The water budgets for the rose gardens were first done three or four days prior to Labour weekend last year when the soil was considered thoroughly wet enough and at field capacity. This set the base line for the garden beds.

Being truly committed to his project, John checks the rain gauge at the garden seven days a week to allow him to accurately gauge how much moisture would have evaporated during the past 24 hours.

It is amazing once you see the benefits of it. It is such a simple thing to do and it has actually become a very essential tool for me, said John.

It blows me away to think about how much water we are now saving.

Council staff are currently investigating other ways to conserve water over the drier months.

Parks team leader Max Ward said the hard part was striking a balance between water conservation and maintaining the thousands of dollars worth of assets in the district's parks and reserves.