Drip lines providing irrigation to a newly installed erosion controlled slope.
I was watching a gardening show located in England, and at some point it hit me, wait, they are not installing any irrigation into any of the landscapes… because it rains all the time there! What a blessing for the plants, right? Well, we are blessed in Southern California, but not so much with plentiful rain.
Our plants need supplemental water; water that we provide, not the skies. If real estate is ‘location, location, location,’ then landscaping in Southern California might be ‘irrigation, irrigation, irrigation.’ There are many types of irrigation, too many to mention here, but here are a few:
- Conventional pop-up spray sprinklers for lawns – these are your traditional sprinkler heads that ‘pop up’ from below and spray water over the plant material.
- Rotors for lawns – much like conventional sprinklers, but their water streams rotate and their water stream is generally longer than conventional sprinklers.
- Micro and shrub sprinklers for perennial plants. These are much like conventional sprinklers for lawns, however, generally, their position is fixed (they do not ‘pop up’), and they emit less gallons per minute.
- Surface drip irrigation – irrigation lines that have water emitters placing targeted water near shrubs. These lines should be covered with mulch. Mulch protects the lines from sun, animal, and foot damage, but it also helps maximize the efficiency of the water output by increasing soil moisture retention.
- PVC lines – these are the life lines that bring water from the main irrigation line out to the sprinklers or drip lines.
- Irrigation Controllers –the brains of the irrigation system. They control when, where, and for how long the water comes on.
These are the main irrigation types found in residential and non agrarian commercial landscapes. A properly designed and built irrigation system is complex, but the payoff is immense, water-wise, and therefore, money-wise.
Contact us today for a free consultation on your landscape and potential irrigation system, or an existing irrigation system that needs repair or refurbishment. We will design and build a smart system that will keep your landscape beautiful, healthy, and water efficient.