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www.landscapeirrigation.com Landscape and Irrigation January/February 2015 17 to mound-like — shapes in your landscape to capture and infiltrate, rather than drain, the rain. 2. Plant your runoff. Emphasize the placement of these basin- shaped rain gardens next to and below impervious surfaces such as roofs, roads, and patios from which water runs off. That way you can double or even triple the available rainfall and flood-control potential in the basins by capturing both rainfall and runoff, which becomes run on, and that's right on! Note that the City of Tucson has passed an ordinance that all new city streets must be designed and built to harvest at least a half-inch rainstorm's worth of water to freely irrigate street-side vegetation shading the street and walkways. This has reduced the costs of plumbing, water, and weeding (weeds prefer regular irrigation, while native perennial plants thrive on more sporadic rain). 3. Plant living pumps to utilize the harvested water. Further decrease potential water loss (and energy consumption) by planting shading vegetation, such as low-water-use, native, food-producing trees that will then grow to shade and cool roads, patios, and the east-, west-, and even north-facing walls of adjoining buildings. This will reduce unwanted sun exposure on our buildings' walls and windows in the morning and afternoon of the hot months. (But leave the winter-sun/south-facing wall open to the winter sun low in the southern sky, so you can get free heat, light, and solar power when you need it most. An appropriately sized roof overhang or awning will help you customize the amount of sun the house gets.) The runoff from the buildings and paved surfaces then runs freely into the rain gardens to irrigate the trees, while the trees passively shade and cool the pavement — reducing water loss to both wasteful runoff and evaporation. 4. Plant fertility by leaving your leaves. Mulch the surface of the soil to make it more porous — this will speed up the rate at which water infiltrates — while reducing the loss of soil moisture to evaporation. Compost and woody organic matter are the best mulches as they provide the added benefit of increasing fertility of the soil and plant growth. Furthermore, this mulch feeds beneficial Rain-garden zones. Water needs and water/cold tolerance determine plant's ideal zone. Reproduced with permission from "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 2nd Edition." Planting runoff. Water volume is increased by contribution from catchment area. Reproduced with permission from "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 2nd Edition." Solar arc of trees harvesting winter sun and summer shade. Use on-site rainwater and greywater to irrigate trees for free. Reproduced from "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 2nd Edition." Fast Fact: Planting rain and trees for passive heating and cooling also reduces water consumed to generate power. Electricity produced from burning coal consumes just under a half gallon of water per kWh of power produced. The average household consumes about 1,000 kWh of electricity a month, and thus about 500 gallons of water per month for the electricity if provided by a coal-burning power plant. Increase that number to 100,000 households, and the monthly water consumption to generate the homes' power jumps to more than 51 million gallons of water a month. Using less power, by providing more of your cooling and heating by summer shade and winter sun, will reduce this water consumption/loss.