Installing garden irrigation, the process.

So you’ve had your garden designed and built and you may have even got it to the stage of planting it, but did you plan on who’s going to water it to keep it alive when you’re not there? Hopefully the irrigation step was planned out at the design stage? Fear not if you haven’t. It will take a little bit of retrofitting to get irrigation in after the garden build is done. So read on to find out all the pieced you need and a video showing you exactly how to connect it all together.

It’s not always at the forefront of peoples mind when they get their garden re-designed or plants added to think about the need to keep them alive. Some our top requests are for gardens to be low maintenance…but every plant needs a little maintenance, that is just the nature of something that needs water to survive, ourselves included!

When we do full garden re-designs we cost up the irrigation element of the project so the client is aware of the relatively small costs of irrigation to look after their investment of plants that we have designed for the scheme. Even if the budget is really tight we try and allow for the infrastructure to at least be in place for when they do have budget for irrigation. Installing something as simple as 16mm irrigation pipe which costs around £30 to be put in place can be run from the tap and under or around any hard landscaped elements. Getting this infrastructure in place then allows the piping to be discreetly hidden.

Over the next few minutes of your reading time we will look at the components involved in installing irrigation in your garden either during the build or retrofitting it. Either way you can still have your plants watered during the times you are away or should there be any hot and dry spells on the way. It will also allow you to not call in a favour from friends, neighbours and family to water the garden for you whilst you are away.

Let’s take a standard size of garden 12 meter by 6 meter garden in London. You may have more or you may have less. Here is a list of the parts that we use to install irrigation in a garden to get to all the plants you want to thrive.

• Outside cold water tap – Essential to water your garden. Most gardens will have a tap outside.
• Irrigation timer – A Claber duo water timer or a diivoo water timer.
  • The double channel water timer allows you to split the garden into 2 zones…Front/Back or Left/Right, this also allows enough water pressure to get to all the plants rather than from one long pipe all the way around.
• 16mm black irrigation pipe – The 16mm irrigation pipe will connect directly to the water timer with some hozelock adaptors on them. The 16mm irrigation pipe will also serve the garden with water when placed near the plants you wish to water and then pegged into the soil.
• 2 x hozelock inlet adaptor – These will connect to the irrigation timer and also receive the 16mm black water pipe to the irrigation timer.
• 13mm drip irrigation connectors (1/2 inch)- You can pick up around 100 pieces of irrigation connectors for under £15. These will give you Tee junctions (for making the tube do right angles around planters and other elements in your garden), elbow joints, end caps and straight connectors.
• 4mm / 7 mm Barbed connectors (1/4 inch) – You can pick up around 280 pieces for around £15. These connectors will plug straight into the main 13mm irrigation pipe and have the micro tubing connected to irrigation drippers.
• 4mm / 7mm micro irrigation tubing (1/4 inch) – This smaller tubing will connect to the irrigation drippers allowing you to target a number of plants from the main pipe.
• 4mm / 7mm Irrigation drippers (1/4 inch) – There are a number of different irrigation drippers available and it depends on how you want to water your plants and the size of plants you want to water. We use micro drip sprinklers. Most have adjustable flow rates on them so you can control the amount of water coming from them.
• Micro drip pipe clip – This clip keeps the 16mm pipe anchored to the ground.

There are other pieces of equipment that you will make life a lot easier when installing the irrigation such as:

• Heat gun (or a lighter) – This will heat the pipe and soften it to allow easy connection of the drippers and barbed connectors.
• Knife – To cut the pipe to length.
• Hammer – To anchor the pipe into the ground.
• 3mm drill bit – To pierce a hole in the 16mm pipe to allow the 4mm-7mm barbed connectors and pipe to split off from the main 16mm pipe.

We have put together an easy to follow video for you below.

If you still need any advice or would like us to quote for installing an irrigation system then call us for a free quote:

hello@chesnutgardens.co.uk

07930 230 080

Most of the items on this page can be purchased from: https://www.waterirrigation.co.uk/ or https://www.amazon.com/s?k=irrigation&crid=28S70WASMEGCO&sprefix=irrigation%2Caps%2C181&ref=nb_sb_noss_1