I’ve just been plumbing up the garden with hozelock-like micro irrigation stuff, so each shrub has one 4litre/hour dripper next to it. How much water does the average shrub need – is 4l a day loads or barely anything?

Depends on the size of shrub and how long it’s been in the ground, what the soil is like, what the weather is like, on a slope etc? Mature shrubs that have been in for a few years shouldn’t need any irrigation in the UK in normal conditions.

One of the driest places in the UK (Cambridge), sandy soil (poor retention) and new shrubs…

As it is I keep forgetting to turn the thing off and it runs all night….

Had one of these set up in my greenhouse and the outside pots. Get a timer for it, they aren’t much then you can just set it to come on for an hour in the morning and evening.

If you find some plants are getting too much and others too little there’s all sorts of types of micro sprinklers and sprayers you can use instead of drippers.

In a very sad geeky way I found it quite satisfying when I had it all neatly set up with its various drippers, sprinklers and misters. The wife didn’t appreciate it’s intricacies though, baby meeeee however loved getting sprayed as she crawled round the pots on a hot summer day.

I’ve not fitted the timer yet, still plumbing up all the beds. Planted 40+ new shrubs and trees a few weeks back and it’s rained about 10mm since, so I’ve got fed up with watering them all by hand (or rather hose). Hence, running 4mm pipe everywhere. I’ve exhausted the local Homebase of bits so am not waiting for an Ebay order so I can finish everything.

Rainfall this month:
[url=https://flic.kr/p/nrUgi8]2014_04-rainfall[/url] by brf, on Flickr

Trees and shrubs, think I’d want to water them in a bit wider diameter than a dripper, as the roots will spread out over a larger area. Micro sprinklers are probably best, you can get adjustable flow ones. I think the drippers are more suited to pots and sprayers to flower beds.

If you have long runs and use sprinklers you might need to use the larger diameter pipe then tee off with 4mm every so often. I know the drippers don’t seem to suffer from being on long chains but think the sprinklers might.

Have a look on hozelok site it will probably tell you