Pauline At my old home I had a combination of Drippers and overhead sprinklers to accomodate the various conditions in my garden. Most of it was rose beds with small areas of lawn scattered here and there. I had noticed the roses near the areas of grass that were watered overhead tended to have cleaner foliage than areas with just drip irrigation. Here at my new home, I decided to just go with overhead sprinklers. The main reason was due to the stroke I had before the system was installed. The roses were not planted until after my stroke so for a few years my rose beds were a work in progress. Installing drip irrigation was beyond my scope of ability at the time. I could probably do it now but the system I have works. Due to my experience with the clean foliage from the overhead watering, I opted to just go that way. My stystem comes on at 4:00 A.M. and finishes by 11:00 A.M. By noon most foliage is dry. At this late date my roses are mostly blackspot free except for a few small areas that get little sun this late in the season. Most beds have good air circulation that helps things dry. A few dead air spaces have roses with blackspot. I'm working on moving roses from those areas. Due to the cool temps we've had all summer, I've not had to water as much as normal. Right now the system is turned off. When on, it waters each of 8 zones for one hour every other day. a rain shutoff keeps the system shut down on rainy days. My very sandy soil lets me water often and very wet soil is dry by late afternoon on hot sunny days. My water source is a four inch well with a one horsepower submersible pump. Our water table is high. Most in the area have wells only 20 feet deep. Mine is 40 feet deep. While a few in the area have pumped air during periods of drought, mine has never faltered. My sandy soil and proximity to Lake Michigan possibly helps keep our water table so high. We've all got septic systems so any water used stays here and doesn't run off into storm drains or sewers. By using mostly organic fertilizers and no pesticides, I avoid any chemical fertilizer or pesticide contamination in my water. All these factors must be considered or eventually one will run out of or begin to pump contaminated water.

E, I am pretty sure Barbra had Gary convert her Plumeria beds to drip irrigation this last summer. You can buy a "Patio kit" which gives you all the basic components for setting one up for containers at L or HD. (just like Mike said). I think i have one in the garden shed I can bring to the next meeting if you wanted to look at one. Mike, as far as the hose goes...over the holidays I went to an "As Seen on TV" Christmas party and walked out with 100 foot flex hose and bacon bowls. The bacon bowls are the best thing ever and that flex hose is at least in the top 5 gag gifts ever received. It might be an inexpensive solution and it works well. Although I would say the flow or output is not as strong as standard hoses.

Can I make a couple of suggestions? Rather than outright removing the roses that you do not plan on keeping, that instead offer cuttings to people who can root and donate to future rose sales. And then track and share just how those bushes handle no watering. Maybe we can use the drought to find out if some roses are tougher than others and can stay relatively dormant during the dry season. They may not bloom or look great, but I think it would be valuable information for all on how rose handle the drought. Kitty, not sure which spring bloomers you have, but I found I had not put the big Felicite Perpetue on the drip system when in September she started loosing leaves. I still have not put her on it, am going to leave her off since she made it last year, is really growing like mad and she is happily blooming away. I am very curious to see if once bloomers are really the way to go in droughts for the future.

I am in Southern California, South of Los Angeles. We do not get much rain here, and it tends to be sunny most of the time, and summers tend to be very hot. It does tend to be a rather dry climate here, but we are not too far away from the coast, so at least the humidity does not go too low. I can't stand going further inland, I can feel the dehydrating dryness in the air and it is not comfortable. Actually we have had a past couple of days of rain, unusual for summer, and it has been unusually humid. Actually things are looking fairly lush and green in our yard, and the front yards in the neighborhood do not look too bad either. It might be because of the recent rain. It is not always this way, usually things start becoming less green in the summer here, since it is a dry Mediterranean climate and seasonal. So especially put in context, it does not feel like a bad year at all. I do frequently water several particular plants every 2 days, but we have cut back on the sprinklers, and that is what takes up most of the water, since it just sprays water all over the place and is not very selective. The yard is not too huge either. I think perhaps because I water so frequently and consistently, the plants do not need a lot of water. That may sound paradoxical to some, but it really is true. If you do not water very frequently, it takes more water to saturate the soil enough so that the plants will not dry out many days later. And because I water selectively, and only get the plants that need it, not the grass or bushes. I have also been intentionally planting things to try to create a moisture microclimate, and I think that is starting to pay off too. So a combination of several factors. I have recently gotten into gardening, and I do not think I would be able to stand having water restrictions if it started affecting the yard in any way, but fortunately that is not the case. I will also have you all know that I hate those drought tolerant plants that are being promoted. I am trying to turn the yard into a lush temperate rainforest, even though I do not live in the climate for that. I planted a redwood, and special ordered authentic varieties of ferns. Yes, we do have two tree ferns, but I made sure to plant them in locations that do not get full sun, because I know tree ferns often tend to turn brown in this climate. They are planted in just a little partial shade, and seem to be doing okay. I try to give the foliage a quick spray every time I am out there with the hose, to keep them from drying out. We do have a rose geranium bush growing in the front where it gets very hot and dry. This bush is very prolific and vigorously spreads even though it does not get much water, and the soil beneath it is terrible hard clay. The bush grows 3-4 feet high, and seems to thrive where most other plants would bake in the sun and wither, it has spread to 10 feet wide. We did not originally plant it either. It was growing in planters, and wherever those planters were set on the ground, even hard dry clay soil, the roots made their way out of the little drainage holes in the bottom of the planter and established themselves into the ground, propagating a new plant. These things can get a little invasive in your yard if left unattended for a long time. So it is possible to have a lush yard in a fairly hot dry climate that does not use too much water, without making compromises. At least that is the way it seems for our yard right now. Just throwing an optimistic report into this thread, I know many others are struggling.