Anyone who has been on holiday to California, Florida or Spain has come across various watering systems on the lawns and gardens of hotels, villas and private residences. They have probably also come across fully automatic watering systems but unless they were around the watered area in the small hours, probably did not realise that the systems were there.

In the UK, just about every golf course has an automatic watering system for the greens and those with pretensions of greatness will also have the tees and fairways automatically watered. Other famous sports locations, such as Wimbledon and Wembley are also fitted with automatic watering systems as are public areas like Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner. In the context of gardens and landscapes, at its most complex, an automatic watering system can comprise pop-up sprinklers, which vanish below the ground surface when not in use to water lawns and beds, drippers for containers and hanging baskets, a mist system for the greenhouse, in-ground electric control valves, buried distribution pipework and control cables, a complex energy saving pumping system and a control computer. At the other extreme, and considerably cheaper, an automatic watering system could comprise simple pulsating jets located in the borders to keep expensive plants alive and thriving through the summer, the jets being fed through pipe laid on the surface (but hidden in the planting,) from a simple timed valve connected by hose to a garden tap. Between these extremes there is a system to suit every garden, every type of planting and just about every pocket.