Earth care

Harvesting rainwater that will then go on to be used in growing food crops sounds like a simple thing to do. I use the word simple in this stage of the design only because I’ve not got around to thinking about the technicalities that come with storing as much rainwater as possible in a small space garden.

Here in the north of England, rain is never too far away. In the 1980s when I was riding around the housing estate on my bike as a child, I remember hosepipe bans. At eight years old this did not affect me very much; the ban was a good excuse for my dad not to water the plants allowing him more time to watch sports on TV.

Today summers in Richmond seem to be generally wetter, and springs are often much dryer than I remember. Over the years we have got some very interesting weather living on the edge of Swale dale, in North Yorkshire. Winters are now mostly free of snow, I have old photographs that seem to be from a very different world, with snow so deep you could get lost in it for days, this may also have something to do with only being 3 feet tall at the time, nevertheless, I choose to overlook that simple fact.

We now may have wetter summers but the lack of snow over winter does mean less water going into the land, In the 80s we seemed to have snow on the ground for months, often hiding behind walls and anywhere else the sun couldn’t reach. These days we have a few hours of heavy snow then it’s gone, leaving the river in a massive flood for a day or two.  

With the change in upland farming practices over recent years the river gets a lot of water coming down when it rains, we have always had lots of floods in the river but now we get some very impressive ones regularly. As a child when I was not on my bike, I would have been down the river fishing, it was not very often that we would have not been able to fish, now I would be coming home often due to flood water after heavy rains.

Whether we are getting more rain or less these days I’m not sure, we certainly get it at different times and often much more of it at once than I remember as a child. With the modernization of farming practices and a focus on bigger is better, the land is certainly changing with regards to how it deals with rainwater.

Keeping hold of rainwater so it can be used productively is what this design is about. In some of my other designs, I’ve focused on trying to keep the soil moist using mulching and dense planting methods but the need for extra water is always needed. The kitchen garden has the highest need for water, intense growing in a small space, plants need to have access to water, the back garden where I follow mostly a forest garden design has less of a water demand but with the now common dry springs I do find myself having to water more often.

People care

Growing some of my food gives me control over how I choose to eat. My goal is to have nutritionally dense produce free of chemicals. The additional benefits include exercise in gardening, a beautiful garden to work in, a space to relax in, and endless amounts of birds all year round, along with lots of other wildlife.

Currently, I’m sitting in my garden on a lovely march morning working at my new garden table working on a laptop, I have perennial leeks growing taller each day, the goji is coming into leaf, and I’ve got several different kinds of seeds planted up, there is a flock of a dozen siskins on the bird feeders and a blackbird building a nest in the beech hedge. Water plays a large role in making all of this happen.

Fair share

Rainwater from the house roof would normally just go down the drain and end up in the river, often ending up in people's houses further downstream. The river Swale certainly adds to the flooding in York, the Swale joins the river Ure at Myton-on-Swale in the Vale of York, the Ure then becomes the river Ouse that runs through York.

Harvesting rainwater from my house roof will have no negative effect on anything else. Storing the water in containers to be used when needed can only benefit the soil, the plants along with the wildlife that both lives and visits the garden.

In good years excess produce grown in the gardens is shared with family and friends. Depending on how this design goes I may also end up with a design that can be shared, or I may just end up with a good story of how I flooded next door's garden.