‘This too shall pass’: Gardeners navigate Calgary’s outdoor water ban

Calgary’s outdoor water restrictions due to a feedermain break have put a damper on spring gardening, but residents are finding ways to conserve water and maintain their yards.

The city, along with Airdrie and Chestermere, has been under mandatory and voluntary water restriction rules since the Bearspaw feedermain ruptured in the Bowness area on June 5, and Calgarians are starting to feel the impact.

“My lawn is getting dry. Tuesday morning I saw it and it’s so dry. I am just following the restrictions right now,” one Calgarian explained to CityNews.

But people are determined to keep their plants alive.

“We have a couple of big rain barrels,” said another resident. “If there is an extra water bottle left over in the house from an outing then it gets put back into the plants and our garden as well.”

Public garden centres are also getting creative, with Inglewood Community Garden saying it has been keeping vegetables and flowers hydrated with buckets of water from the Bow River.

“We have been hauling buckets, and as you can see behind me the garden is large and that is a lot of buckets … five-gallon buckets being hauled in,” said Julia Hinman, chairman of Inglewood Community Garden.

But this weekend it’s expected to rain, and Hinman and the association are making every drop count.

“I would put out any bucket you got in your house, that’s what we will do,” she said.

“We have large totes which we’ll open up to allow the water to come in, but you know even a bucket — we also have large garbage cans, and we use those as well.”

After the city declared a local state of emergency Saturday, Mayor Jyoti Gondek said the expected rain is an opportunity to catch water and use it for outdoor use, such as for gardening.

“To quote my friend from Airdrie, Mayor Peter Brown, ‘This is not a burden. We are fortunate to have taps that we can turn on where fresh water comes out. Right now we just need to continue to use a little bit less,'” she said at a news conference Saturday.

 Gondek also said no indoor water restrictions are planned at this time, but Calgarians should “understand that outdoor water restrictions are in place.”

“That means you cannot water your lawn. It means you can’t wash your car in your driveway. It means don’t think that at midnight, you can sneak out and water your garden because no one’s looking,” she said.

“You need to know in your soul that you’re using water and right now we need you to please not do that. And take advantage of the rain that’s coming.”

If the threshold of 480 million litres of water use is exceeded, the city says it won’t be able to maintain demand and the water supply will eventually run out.

And while there is no timeline on when the outdoor water bans will be lifted, Hinman remains hopeful Calgarians’ plants will grow through the season.

“This too shall pass and for many gardeners, we know we have ups and downs, we are always optimistic and anyone that puts a seed in the ground is optimistic about the future”