‘Make Water Work’ encourages use of drought tolerant plants, reduced water waste
With lower water levels in the Okanagan this year, the Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB) has kicked off its annual outdoor water conservation campaign earlier than usual.
This year’s Okanagan WaterWise program with the slogan “Make Water Work” takes aim at water waste in residential homes and gardens.
The valley has less water available per person than anywhere else in Canada, but it has some of the highest use in the country, the OBWB says in a news release.
Household lawns and gardens account for 24 per cent of all water used in the Okanagan and a lot of it is wasted.
This year’s campaign aims to promote a collection of plants that require less water and grow well in the drier Okanagan climate. The collection is sold through participating garden centre sponsors, including Sandhu Greenhouses in Osoyoos.
Mayors from around the Okanagan took a pledge to conserve water and they are challenging residents of their communities to do the same at www.MakeWaterWork.ca.
Coun. Carol Youngberg acted on behalf of Mayor Sue McKortoff at the recent launch of the program.
“The mayors are competing with each other to see how many residents per capita are signing the pledge,” said Anna Warwick Sears, executive director of the OBWB.
By making the competition on a per-capita basis, smaller communities such as Osoyoos and Oliver have a chance to compete with larger cities, she said. Oliver won in 2014.
“It’s a friendly competition and it gets the elected officials excited and involved,” she said, noting that one Kelowna councillor got so excited by what she heard at the launch that she left with a big cart full of drought tolerant plants.
Warwick Sears said one of the worst ways people waste water is by overwatering or giving plants far more water than they actually need.
Another problem is that when grass is put down, it is often put on subsurface soil without a layer of topsoil.
Studies show that when topsoil with compost is added, the lawn needs far less water because the soil holds the water better.
“A lot of the new developments go in and they strip off all the topsoil and then they roll down the lawn,” she said. “You create this terrible condition where to keep the grass green, you have to water it every day.”
Watering during the daytime for residential landscaping is also wasteful because the water evaporates at a faster rate, she said.
People also need to make sure their irrigation systems are working properly so the water isn’t going onto pavement or into the gutter.
The advantage to the Make Water Work Plant Collection is that people can have beautiful plants in their gardens that can be a permanent fixture and they don’t have to worry about pulling things out if there are water restrictions or stressing plants if they can’t water often, Warwick Sears said.
“You could have a permanent, beautiful garden and it’s a garden that’s appropriate for our climate,” she said. “Our climate is quite water stressed, especially in Osoyoos. Why would you want to live in Canada’s only desert and grow plants that need a lot of water?”
Some of the plants on the Make Water Work list provide three seasons of colour interest. These include cushion spurge, thrift, catnip, lavender, Missouri evening primrose, tail sedum, coreopsis and blanket flower.
Others are low maintenance and are ultra-low in water use. These include blue fescue, silver mound, sedum, hens and chicks, Russian sage, thyme and yucca.
The “Make Water Work Plant Collection” was developed by the OBWB’s Okanagan WaterWise, the Okanagan Xeriscape Association (OXA) and Bylands Nursery.
There are seven garden centres from Armstrong to Osoyoos participating in the program.
Surinder Sandhu of Sandhu Greenhouses said she and her husband Jeewan Sandhu sell all the plants in the collection. In fact, they were already selling them before the collection was announced.
Additionally, they also sell a wide range of cacti, which although not part of the collection, are also very drought tolerant and grow well around Osoyoos.
Surinder Sandhu said her business has long encouraged people to grow these plants if they are looking for drought tolerant plants to grow.
Richard McGuire
Special to the Chronicle
