5 effective watering devices for your lawn

One of the first things you'll notice when you're browsing brochures or websites is a wide variety of watering devices. Here are the basic types and a few things you need to know about each one.

• Use these to water individual plants, or buy "inline" drippers and use them in a series with a six millimetre (0.2 inch) tube.
• Drippers work great for container plants too. They're colour-coded for different flow rates between two litres (half a gallon) per hour and 15 litres (four gallons) per hour.
• In general, use lower flow rates for less porous soil, like clay, to allow more time for the water to soak in.
• Buy pressure-compensating drippers to maintain a steady flow despite the water pressure.

• These are like sprinklers without moving parts.
• You can choose a spray pattern from a quarter circle up to a full circle, or buy sprayers with adjustable spray patterns.
• They spray from 15 to 128 litres (four to 34 gallons) per hour and up to a radius of about 3.6 metres (12 feet).
• Use sprayers to water ground cover or densely planted flower beds.

• A cross between drippers and sprayers, many bubblers are adjustable for flows up to 132 litres (35 gallons) per hour and diameters to 45 centimetres (18 inches).
• Since they put out more water than drippers, they're good for larger plants like roses, tomatoes and shrubs.

• Also called emitter tubing, drip line consists of six millimetre or 12 millimetre (0.2 to 0.5 inch) tubing with built-in drippers.
• It's available with emitters spaced different distances apart for different flow rates.
• Drip line is great for vegetable gardens or rows of plants. You can use it to encircle shrubs and large plants, or lay it out in a grid pattern as a substitute for sprinklers in a densely planted flower bed.
• Use six millimetre (0.2 inch) drip line for maximum flexibility.

• These are miniature versions of sprinklers you might use in the yard. Most have flow rates between 50 and 150 litres (13 and 40 gallons) per hour and cover a radius of one to three metres (three to ten feet).
• Since most sprinklers have a relatively high flow rate, you can't use more than about 15 or 20 in one zone of 12 millimetre (0.5 inch) tubing.