Irrigation

Not content with having the largest non-industrial living roof in Canada and North America, designers in Canada have gone one step further with the completion of the largest and most biologically diverse living wall in North America. Green wall designers Green Over Grey recently completed work on the living wall at the Semiahmoo Public Library and Royal Canadian Mounted Police Facility in Surrey, British Columbia, which consists of a unique design covering nearly 3,000 square feet (279 square meters) and consisting of over 10,000 individual plants. Read More

With all the publicity the Gulf Oil Spill is currently receiving, it’s easy to forget about another disaster from which the city of New Orleans is still recovering - the flood caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. That flood, of course, occurred because the levee along the city’s coastline couldn’t stand up to the assault of the storm-driven waves. Daniel Wren, a hydraulic engineer who works for the USDA Agriculture Research Service in Oxford, Mississippi, is now working on a system that might have kept that from happening. He has developed floating barriers that can dissipate up to 75 percent of a wave’s energy, before that wave reaches the levee. Read More

University of Sheffield student Jon Leary was required to “make something useful out of rubbish” as part of his dissertation. What he ended up doing was transforming lives. As part of his studies as a Mechanical Engineering major, Jon spent four months in Guatemala. There, he introduced the locals to his bicibomba movil, a mobile bicycle-powered water pump. Now, using cast-off bicycles and discarded pumps, Guatemalan farmers can irrigate their land much more easily and effectively than ever before. Read More

Salt might be great with popcorn and peanuts, but it’s not so good with soil. The U.N. estimates that the world loses at least three hectares of arable land every minute because of soil salinity. Most crops simply can’t cope with too much salt. Which is why a breakthrough by a team at the University of Adelaide in Australia could have a profound effect on the food supplies of our future: they’ve found a way to genetically modify plants to become more salt tolerant. Read More

At a time of severe water shortages and ever-hotter summers, conservation of water for gardens is increasingly important. But you can only collect rainwater when it’s raining. What about the rest of the time? The AIR-igator ingeniously solves this problem by collecting condensate from air conditioners, storing it and then automatically drip-watering. So, the hotter it gets, the more water your garden gets. Read More

With the return of Summer comes the now familiar imposition of water restrictions and the unwelcome return of headaches for gardeners and nursery managers alike. Fortunately, pain relief for lovers of all things horticultural is available in the form of clever green tech known as smart irrigation, which plugs in to online weather information to optimize garden watering and minimize waste. Timing being everything in business (as well as comedy), smart sprinkler manufacturer Cyber-Rain has recently upgraded its range to add more independent zone control, better wireless communication, a simple and clear interface and an enhanced software solution. Read More

With water conservation becoming an increasingly urgent priority in many parts of the world, we're always on the lookout for something that saves on H2O. Described as a "power strip + surge protector for watering outdoors", the AquaHub is a water management tool that connects to a standard garden hose, branching out into six regulated irrigation outlets to pinpoint and cater for the specific needs of different areas within the garden, saving time as well as water. Read More

Looking more like an alien spacecraft than a sprinkler, Aquarius is an irrigation control system designed by Aydin Oztoprak and Ozgur Ruhi Ulvan. Solar powered and remote managed, Aquarius automatically adjusts its water flow depending on the soil, crop and weather conditions, making it one very intelligent piece of eco-friendly water design. Read More