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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.
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