Hydroshame: Should I feel guilty for watering?

Inevitably - and quite understandably - there are vast quantities of posts, articles and videos about drought tolerant planting around at the moment. Planting up a garden that never needs watering is increasingly billed as a badge of honour. To be honest, I’d love it if I never had to water our borders - just think of the time it would save! - and if you can create a garden that you love in that style, then I think that’s great. When these gardens are lauded as one way to help mitigate climate change, and/or to reduce the workload during hosepipe bans I’m on board with that. My concern is that some (and by no means all) of these gardens are being framed as some sort of virtuous ideal, implying that gardens that do need watering need to be converted to something more ‘eco-friendly’.

Why is this bothering me so much? It’s because I fear it could be yet another thing that puts people off gardening. Whilst it’s one of the healthiest hobbies, and one of the most rewarding careers, let’s face it: gardening is hard. Botanical science is every bit as complicated as it is fascinating, horticultural language - especially the latin - can be baffling, and no matter how stringently you follow the ‘rules’, nature often has other ideas.

Here in the UK we’re phasing out peat (thankfully), but the pressure is now on to find plants that have been peat free since they were seeds, grown organically in your own country - or better yet, grown in your closest nursery. Like everything else, plants and compost are getting more expensive. Plus there’s pressure from social media to achieve the ‘perfect garden’. I really do worry that, if people feel their only two options are to either change wholesale to drought-tolerant planting schemes or to watch their gardens die of thirst every summer, they’ll give up. They’ll decide to change the whole lot to lawn or - terrifyingly - astroturf that will stay green, and have more hard landscaping instead of plants.

As gardeners, we’re often at the forefront of protecting the environment. Many of us feel passionately that we want to do all we can to be conscientious in the face of climate change. This makes us susceptible to feeling guilty if we don’t do everything that we possibly can, and it’s this that I want to address in this article. We are at the risk of bearing the brunt of drought issues, whilst others - particularly certain industries - who create no environmental benefits, continue using and wasting vast quantities of water unchallenged. Is this remotely fair?