Flowers for the future
How does your garden grow?
Water is essential for plants to grow. The soil acts like a sponge holding onto the water and letting the excess drain away. When it doesn’t rain for a while the top layer of soil will dry as the water evaporates. Sometimes if you dig down just a few centimetres you can find moist soil.
The amount of water needed to make the soil moist again is called the soil moisture deficit. Some plants can survive a larger soil moisture deficit than others. Plants that can cope with a higher soil moisture deficit will survive best if there isn’t rain for a while. Can you find out:
- Which plants need the most watering?
- Which plants need the least watering?
- Does the height of the plant make a difference?
Established trees and Shrubs
Young trees and shrubs
Herbaceous perennials
Perennials and bedding plants
Fruit trees
Vegetables
- To understand more about different types of plants, go to the BBC’s gardening website.
Design a garden for the future
Gardeners often water their gardens in spring and summer to help the plants grow and make the garden look beautiful. But water is also essential for human life and wildlife. As the climate changes we could see less rain falling in the UK, but more falling in winter and less in the summer. The lowest rainfall and the highest temperatures may be in south east England. This means gardeners and wildlife could end up competing for our scarce water reserves.
There are two ways we could avoid this happening:
- Reduce the demand for water by growing plants adapted to drier climates
- Increase the supply of water by saving and recycling water in the garden
Geographers are always looking for the most sustainable solution to a problem. Your job is to design the most sustainable future garden. You only have a budget of £1000!
Step 1: Research the options
Work in pairs or groups. Choose one option each to investigate.
Find out:
- How using this option will help your garden grow even if the climate gets drier.
- What you can do to make sure your garden always looks great.
- What problems you might encounter.
Step 2: Design your garden
Together, design a garden for the future using the information from
your investigation.
You will need to decide:
- How big your garden is
- Who your garden will be used by (don’t forget to think about wildlife)
- What you want to grow
- Where you want plants and features to be placed
- Costs of plants and features
- Remember paving over areas reduces the amount of rainfall that your garden can absorb
Download a design template
Step 3: Prepare a presentation of your design.
Make sure that you clearly identify:
- Why a new type of garden is necessary - what is happening to our climate? Gather data from other areas of this website
- How you designed your garden
- What you want it to be like
- How you want it to be managed
Download more information on which plants may suffer and which plants will be easier to grow as temperatures increase and rainfall becomes less, but more intense. Use the links below for further research.
Links
- See how others have designed green gardens
- Royal Horticultural Society website
- Learn how to design a garden
- Plants and climate change in the UK, from a leading conservation society
- Environmentally friendly gardening catalogue
Next: Stand up and deliver