WWT Washington’s top tips on climate change gardening
With the extreme summer heat, very high temperatures can spark torrential thunderstorms and flash flooding – here’s how rain gardening can help.
To help gardeners cope with climate change, WWT Washington Wetland Centre is encouraging us to try ‘rain gardening’. Our gardens will likely need to withstand more periods of drought and heavy rain. The centre’s Water Lab (formerly the Working Wetland Garden show garden) demonstrates how to manage these extremes.
The garden was originally exhibited at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. It was designed by Jeni Cairns, who won a gold medal and Best Show Garden. Read more about the garden. It assumes a green roof will be impractical. Instead, it channels rainfall off a central roof into a series of recycled troughs filled with gravel and marsh plants. Anyone can do this instead of having your drainpipe pointing directly into your drains.
Rain gardening – filtering the water
The troughs filter out dust, leaves, twigs and bird poo. The marsh plants take up some of the water, but after heavy rain, the troughs overflow into a pond surrounded by plants. Some of the water slowly evaporates or transpires away. The pond can overflow into permeable paving, flower beds, and hollows, all of which allow water to soak away slowly into the ground.
WWT Washington’s centre manager Gill Pipes said: “The concept is really simple. It’s just a case of holding back rainwater and releasing it slowly. This helps to stop the garden from flooding during heavy rainfall and keeps water reserves back for when it’s dry.
“If your garden slopes downhill, you can even use a series of troughs, channels, and ponds as a slow watering system to regulate water flowing through your garden.
Rain gardening – ‘Clear, clean water’
“The rain-fed pond, with clear, clean water, helps to attract wildlife. By slowing down water running off your garden, you’re also helping your local environment cope with floods and drought, too. That’s why it’s called the Working Wetland Garden. It mimics the water-storing properties of Britain’s moorlands and wetlands.”
The Washington garden uses 85 different plant varieties, most of them British natives, including purple loosestrife, flowering rush, greater spearwort, cornflowers, teasels, scabious, foxgloves, meadowsweet, ragged robin, and yellow flag iris. HSBC donated the Working Wetland Garden to WWT as part of its Water Programme.
Getting there
WWT Washington Wetland Centre is at Pattinson, Washington, Tyne and Wear NE38 8LE, tel 0191 416 5454. It sits on the north bank of the River Wear, overlooked by Penshaw Monument.
The centre sits east of Washington town centre in Pattinson (formerly District 15), four miles from the A1(M), one mile from the A19. Follow the brown signposts off the A195, A19, A182, and A1231 Washington Highway.
For more information on the centre, visit www.wwt.org.uk. There’s more to read on the National Flood Map.
