Water Tanks

As most readers probably appreciate, gardens require ongoing maintenance, mulching, nutritional needs of plants, and not least of all water. Which with global warming is becoming more and more precious. So here in the suburbs of melbourne we try hard to keep our garden lush and green by recycling our grey water and now, capturing any water which does come out of the sky, in our tank.

I am very fortunate as Mr Secret Gardens is an engineer, who has cleverly arranged the drainage so that all water off the house, and driveway, runs into two smaller tanksand and then gets pumped up into the main tank at the back of the house. We have managed to disguise it quite well behind our olive tree, (you can see it hiding in the shadows in the title pic),  happily it seems to be filling already. Any excess runoff will go back into the storm water but with our garden being the size it is there is not much chance of having too much of that!  There is also another tank which we will use to catch the overflow which we may in the future get a plumber to hook up to the cistern. But for now I am content with using what comes out of the sky to keep our garden alive!

I am of the opinion that water tanks should be a compulsory part of all new homes. To me and many of the people i know it just makes sense. We would save water, and save money too!
And here are my lovely girls enjoying the dust !!!

Thanks for reading, your comments and remarks are always welcome!!

Tanks, Recession and work

I must admit to working in an area which i really am not that interested in! At the moment my full time work is with a firm of architects, and i would much rather be outside pruning roses or planting something.

However in these turbulent economic times we need to take what we can get and keep our eyes peeled forwork in what we really love.
Having said that i am earning a good wage and this means i am able to indulge myself and my family a bit and get some things done around the place. Things which cost but will help us be more sustainable and less reliant on commercial products.
Soon i am hoping to purchase a tank and get it hooked up to the house so we no longer need rely on mains water to water the veggie garden. At the moment most of the garden is kept alive by grey water. However this isnt suitable for the veggies and herbs so they need to be watered of the mains, here in Melbourne we are only able to do this twice a week, from 6-8am on two days of the week. In the middle of winter that can be pretty chilly. But the fact remains that most of the time we dont get enough rain to sustain the garden on a regular basis. So tanks will help store water when it does rain.

Now all i need to do is decide what sort of tank i can afford and is suitable for our garden and needs. Like going shopping really!!!!! The photos I have posted here are an indication of types of tanks available, and are provided courtesy of Sustainable Gardening Australia.