Water, water hardly anywhere

Here in beautiful Melbong, garden city, famous for it's leafy eastern suburbs (and way less famous for it's dried out scrofulous north, west and south eastern suburbs) we are on stage 3A water restrictions. Stage 3A was invented to save the government from criticism by the leafy suburbs because it still allows them to water their gardens. You don't want to poke a sleeping dragon (it's the managerial belt - people who might even know how to do something political and not generally too fond of our 'Labour' government).

For people actually following the restrictions, this means you can only water your gardens using a system for 2 hours twice a week and by hand 2 hours twice a week and lawns may not be watered. The native plants are surviving, the pampered European and other introduced plants are doing it hard. Since Melbong is basically a European style city (in the world's driest continent), it's making the place look more than a little parched and frayed.

I was thinking about this as I installed a replacement water controller (the LCD display on the old one had failed and I had no idea what it was doing). It is my understanding (and experience) that over watered plants tend to have shallow roots and therefore become highly dependent on constant watering whereas lightly watered plants develop deeper roots so they can tap into whatever is left of the ground water (or they die). But watering systems can pump out a hell of a lot of water in 2 hours. So are we systematically weakening our gardens?

Or maybe the idea is to soak down to whatever roots the plants have and then leave it for a few days? Or maybe they went with the most complex rule they thought they could get away with and that citizens could understand? Considering we are in the tenth year of 'drought', down to 30% water storage (for 2 million people) and the CSIRO projects Victoria will get dryer and hotter, I don't hold out much hope for the lawn, unless people get seriously into water recycling (but this costs money and effort so I wont be holding out much hope). And anyway, we'd be better off planting carbon fixing plants like bushy shrubs and trees than lawn.

I suppose this means the lawn will become a status symbol rather than every man's right along with a quarter acre plot to waste.

American tourist to English Baronet while admiring his lawn: 'How do you get a lawn like that?' .Baronet: 'Cut it and roll it. Cut it and roll it. ,,, For three hundred years'.

I suspect we don't have that sort of time.