Water saving tips for your garden

Try not to over water your lawn, because this encourages surface rooting rather than deep roots.

After cutting your lawn, leave the clippings on the lawn to provide nutritious mulch.

Here's a selection of plants you might want to consider in your next trip to the garden centre.

Plants for a rain garden

• cardinal flower
• black-eyes Susan
• swamp mallow
• turtlehead
• swamp milkweed
• sedges
• bluestar

Plants that don't need lots of water

• succulents
• lavandin, a lavender hybrid
• lychnis
• purple emperors
• Karley Rose

Don't forget to tweet us your gardening efforts, @eswater_care!

We know the kinds of plants we want, now where's best to put them?

Choosing the right kind of bed, pot and planter makes a real difference.

Always try to:

• choose a natural dip in the ground to plant a rain garden
• keep your plants hydrated with water storing gels and crystals, and
• choose ceramic and metal plant pots over terracotta, or line your pots with polythene to stop water draining away.

Get yourself a water butt!

Did you know?

Around 90,000 litres of water falls onto a roof in a year, and that’s enough to fill 473 water butts.

Capture some of this water by placing a water butt by sheds, greenhouses, and conservatories.

Water butts are available to Essex and Suffolk Water customers at bargain prices here.