Show #12/5912. A Beautiful Willamette Valley Garden

Tip 2. Plants Clean Our Water

A lot of the earlier plantings at Oregon Garden were introduced naturally like on the feet of birds or whatever. It's a beautiful, bio-diverse place and provides a wonderful lesson in the power that plants have to actually clean our water. It's a wonderful system and great for people to come and actually see how it works. They have trails that are set all around and through the wetland portion so one can really get sneak peek and look at what's going on.

Eric wonders what are some ways that the home gardener might engage in WATER REMEDIATION? First, consider drought tolerant plants. Additionally, Ty has two staff members with beautiful planted gardens and at their homes they have a system of rain barrels combined with 25,000 gallon cisterns. That set-up gets them through the entire summer. Rain barrels or water storage systems are effective. Some folks out here actually have some extra land and they will dig large, basically, pond systems, get those lined out, then have an aerator going to kind of keep the algae down. They will do that all winter, then in the summer, they'll throw a pump in there, and they'll be able to irrigate. This is important because if you don't have a water source, even if you're close to streams or the rivers, you can't water. There are a lot of different ways one can utilize the natural rainfall to irrigate. Additionally Ty is starting to notice a trend where people are utilizing their gray water. Plumbing and other systems are a little different but typically sink water or shower water is utilized and that water can be used for some of your plants. Eric comments that in so many parts of the country we're surrounded by pavement, that means there's roof shed water basically just going into the storm water system and that can oftentimes cause flooding. This water can be retained on the property and used for irrigation. It's a very sustainable approach.