Designing for a Cool City – National Guidelines for Self-Watering Landscapes
CRC for Water Sensitive Cities
E2Designlab are the lead authors for a new national guideline to assist in the uptake and implementation of passive irrigation using stormwater. This guideline has been developed to introduce self-watering landscapes and their role and function in Australian urban landscapes. It presents a range of new design approaches for utilising stormwater to cool urban areas, achieve healthier trees, turf and other vegetation to help reduce urban heat through evapotranspiration and shade. Passive irrigation uses gravity to get stormwater runoff off hard surfaces onto landscaped areas to sustain plants during dry weather, by providing access to soil moisture stores. The use of stormwater as a valuable resource also reduces stormwater pollution and discharge volumes to receiving waters such as rivers, creeks, lakes and marine environments. The intent of the guidelines is to increase industry awareness of these approaches, help identify opportunities for incorporating self-watering landscapes into our urban areas and to increase capacities to successfully deliver these systems nationally. The guideline provides high level advice on how these systems can be designed to integrate within different streetscape and paved settings, along with the key considerations for design, construction, and maintenance
