How to make your garden ready for rain

We’re developing a rather polar relationship with water, writes garden designer Hannah Phillips.

Climate change is bringing us warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers, and many of our gardens, and infrastructure, are not designed to cope.

More generally, our ability to deal with significant rain is altered by development, often stripping land of vegetation that would ordinarily intercept and slow rain water, while impermeable surfaces generate torrents of run-off.

This water, directed into storm drains or dual sewers (some 100,000km still exist in the UK), mixes with foul waste water and often breaches or is intentionally released into rivers and streams, even streets.

Dealing with water this way short circuits the water cycle, directing it to concentrated areas away from gardens instead of allowing it to infiltrate and replenish ground water or evaporate from surfaces.

These are important parts of the water cycle that can help build in resilience to drier conditions.

We need to appreciate water for the finite resource it is and see rain for the opportunity it can be in the garden and beyond.

This can start with how we manage rain in our own gardens:

* Keep impermeable surfaces to a minimum. Allowing water to soak into the ground replenishes reserves and builds in resilience

* Catch and slow water with a rain planter. These brilliant features retain water and provide space for planting while allowing overflow back into the drain at a reduced volume and velocity. Rain gardens can be an option for larger spaces

* Catch and collect water for future use - as much as your space will allow. Dipping troughs can be a lovely addition to a space

* Right plant, right place ‘Climate Change Edition’: We need to pick plants based on conditions they might face in future to minimise required inputs such as water.

There are lots of practical rain water management solutions that create interesting features, increase biodiversity and reduce the amount of run-off our gardens contribute to the wider environment.

All it takes is a bit of imagination and understanding.