The letter from the water company usually turns up the same week the lawn turns the colour of straw. A temporary use ban — the old "hosepipe ban" — means no hose, no sprinkler, no pressure washer until further notice. After the dry spring we had, a few regions are already there, and most of the south looks one rainless fortnight away from it. The annoying part is that a garden does not actually need a great deal of water in July. It needs the right water, in the right place, and most of us have been pouring the wrong water down the drain since March.
What a ban actually stops you doing
The rules are narrower than people assume. A temporary use ban covers a hosepipe attached to the mains for watering the garden, cleaning paths, filling a pond or washing the car. It does not stop you using a watering can, and it does not stop you using water you have collected yourself — rainwater from a butt, or washing-up water carried out by hand. So the household that has stored a few hundred litres carries on almost as normal, while the neighbour relying on the tap watches the borders crisp up.
That distinction is the whole game. The job in late June and early July is to get as much non-mains water as you can into containers, and to stop wasting the water already running through the house.
Get the butts working before you need them
A standard 210-litre water butt from B&Q or Wickes costs somewhere around £30 to £45, and a slimline version that tucks against a wall a little more. The catch is that an empty butt in July is useless — summer rain comes in short heavy bursts, and if your downpipe diverter is gunged up or the lid is missing, you collect almost nothing. Spend ten minutes now: clear the gutter above the downpipe, check the diverter flap moves freely, and put a brick or a bag of gravel on a wobbly butt so a child cannot pull it over.
One full 210-litre butt is roughly two weeks of careful watering for a small plot. If you have the room, link two together with a connector kit — the first fills, then overflows into the second — and you have a genuine reserve for a dry spell rather than a token gesture.
Stop pouring the bath down the drain
Greywater — the water left over from baths, showers, washing-up and rinsing veg — is the supply most people ignore entirely. A single bath holds around 80 litres. Tip it into a couple of buckets before you pull the plug and you have watered a fair stretch of border for nothing.
Two sensible cautions. Keep greywater off anything you are about to eat raw — salad leaves, strawberries, herbs you pick and don't cook. And use it within a day; standing greywater turns and starts to smell. For ornamental beds, shrubs, established trees and the lawn, it is perfectly good. Ordinary washing-up liquid and bath water in modest amounts will not harm established plants, though it is worth avoiding water loaded with bleach or strong drain cleaner.
Make every can count
Stored water is finite, so waste none of it on evaporation. Water in the evening once the sun is off the beds, so it soaks down overnight instead of steaming off the surface. Aim the can at the soil around the base of the plant, not over the leaves — wet foliage in heat invites mildew and does the roots no good.
- Prioritise the plants that cannot recover: anything planted this spring, containers and hanging baskets, and the veg patch. These have shallow roots and will die, not just sulk.
- Let the lawn go. Established turf turns brown and looks dead but is merely dormant; it greens up within a fortnight of proper rain. Watering it is the single biggest waste of a limited supply.
- Mulch the moisture in. A 5cm layer of bark, compost or even grass clippings over damp soil slows evaporation dramatically — one good watering can then last several days rather than one.
The containers are the real casualties
Pots dry out faster than anything because there is so little soil to hold water, and a terracotta pot in full sun can need a drink twice a day. Group them together in light shade during a heatwave so they shelter each other, and stand the thirstiest in saucers that hold a reserve at the bottom. A handful of water-retaining granules mixed into the compost when you plant up — sold at any garden centre — genuinely buys you a day between waterings.
None of this is about heroics. It is about reaching the next proper downpour with the plants you actually care about still alive. Get the butts catching, carry the bath water out, and let the lawn fend for itself — it always does.