GARDENING WITH LESS WATER-PAP Format: Paperback

This beginner-friendly guide offers simple, inexpensive, low-tech techniques for watering your garden much more efficiently — using up to 90 percent less water for the same results.

With illustrated step-by-step instructions, David Bainbridge shows you how to install buried clay pots and pipes, wicking systems, and other porous containers that deliver water directly to a plant’s roots with little to no evaporation. These irrigation systems are available at hardware stores and garden centers; are easy to set up and use; and work for garden beds, container gardens, and trees.

After reading this guide, you will learn how to:

• Set up different kinds of irrigation systems
• Landscape to catch water
• Harvest rainwater

With drought and water shortages on the rise, Bainbridge’s methods of low-tech, low-cost irrigation systems will keep you prepared for any scenario and ensure your gardens can continue to thrive. 

David A. Bainbridge is professor emeritus of ecology and agroecology at Alliant International University in San Diego, California. He is the author or co-author of many books, including The Straw Bale House (Chelsea Green, 1994), A Guide for Desert and Dryland Restoration (Island Press, 2007), and Passive Solar Architecture (Chelsea Green, 2011). He lives in San Diego and has been researching dryland restoration and irrigation since 1981.