The Royal Horticultural Society has unveiled emergency plans to protect its gardens from major water shortages in the future.
The environmental charity, which owns and operates five renowned public gardens in England, said on Saturday it will invest in more water-capture and water-management projects in 2026 after severe droughts last year.
In response to increasingly erratic weather patterns, the RHS is also urging gardeners to mirror its measures this winter and spring to prepare for as much rain as possible.
This includes preparing the soil with hollow tining, chop and drop and mulching, creating rain gardens, installing rainwater storage facilities and considering whether plants are in the right place.
Global heating continues to drive volatility in the water cycle, with the UK experiencing below average rainfall more frequently and a rise in the risk of flooding.
Last year was the driest spring in 132 years and the hottest summer since records began, plunging several areas of the UK into drought, with some still recovering in January.
In preparation for the next drought, the RHS is reviewing how and where to allocate water across its gardens at Wisley in Surrey, Hyde Hall in Essex, Rosemoor in Devon, Harlow Carr in North Yorkshire and Bridgewater in Greater Manchester.
Projects in 2026 will include increasing the storage of water in tanks and lakes, installing ebb-and-flow benches in retail centres to reduce water use, and investing in rain garden installations.
The charity will also carry out research on soil health in its gardens and continue to quantify individual plant and whole landscape water use. In addition, it will explore using more grey-water – cleaner wastewater from baths, showers, sinks and washing machines.
The plans mark a wider shift in the RHS’s approach to the climate crisis as it focuses on adapting to the growing impacts of planet-warming emissions in the atmosphere.
Tim Upson, the RHS’s director of horticulture, said: “Water is the lifeblood of any garden – important not only to human health and wellbeing but the broader environment and wildlife – and we, like the UK’s 34 million gardeners, are having to adapt to the new normal; prioritising collection, storage and management of rainwater as well as relocating and reassessing our collections to future-proof them.”
Upson said the charity’s updated water management plan “gets into the nitty-gritty” of where a last bucket of water might be used in each garden. “That’s the reality of the situation we need to prepare for and we would be foolish not to,” he said.
To understand what grows in its own gardens and advise British gardeners, the RHS is also recording the use of water in different garden landscapes, such as trees, herbaceous perennial borders, turf lawns and vegetable gardens.
The RHS said it was using this knowledge to predict water use patterns by these plants and prepare for future planting and water resources management as the climate crisis accelerates.
Upson said: “There’s a sweet spot between building plants’ resilience to withstand drier periods by providing less water, but then there’s the potential of stressing a plant and leaving them susceptible to plant health issues, not to mention reduced floriferousness, which has a knock-on effect for wildlife and humans.”
