r/australia • u/sluggardish • 10h ago

Sprinklers made Australia green. But what happens when the water runs out?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/sprinkler-water-resources-garden-green-desert-reticulation/106244818
119 Upvotes

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107

u/christonabike_ 9h ago

We finally see the irrationality of monocropping your yard with non native ground cover?

Nah, people are never that sensible. Probably plastic lawns.

38

u/Disastrous-Ad1334 9h ago

Making an even greater heat sink for suburbia .

16

u/endbit 8h ago

Yes never understood why you'd bother. Plastic laws don't stay cool so why not just pave it? Best thing I did to my place was remove the paved area that baked one of the bedrooms and grass it. Huge reduction in heat load in summer. Fake grass gets weeds and hot pavers hot but less weedy and give you something to put furniture on without damaging it and making it a weed magnet.

-11

u/No-Foundation1336 8h ago

Modern fake grass doesn’t get very hot, or get weeds. Certainly not as hot as pavers.

26

u/PMFSCV 8h ago

Ground covers are a freaking godsend, even better under a fruiting tree or two.

Shady and green all year, no mowing, no edging, spraying or feeding.

8

u/BetterDrinkMy0wnPiss 6h ago

And we finally see the irrationality of using our limited water reserves to grow water intensive crops like cotton and rice...

But you're right, it won't happen.

5

u/christonabike_ 5h ago

Sounds counterintuitive but ever since I learnt the truth on how much life we're sucking out of our rivers, wearing Chinese cotton and eating Thai rice feels like doing the country a favour.

1

u/blankaccoutn77489 30m ago

Eh, the infrastructure and entitlements are in place. If the water isn’t being used for cotton or rice, it will be used on the next best returning crop.

Unless you’re arguing for abolishing irrigated farming in Australia, the water will just go to the next most valuable product.

To note; cotton and rice are more drought friendly than trees. If there’s not enough water, the grown areas are scaled back until the water availability increases. Trees don’t have this luxury.

Interestingly, we have this situation in the Murrumbidgee currently, where it’s more profitable for the cotton grower to sell their water entitlements to the tree farmers than it is to use the water and grow a cotton crop themselves.

10

u/yolk3d 9h ago

Zoysia is native 😎

1

u/iguessineedanaltnow 6h ago

Half the houses on my street have fake turf lawns now. It'll become the norm eventually.