When you are installing new landscape and hardscape around your home, you might want to consider a new sprinkler system or zone to irrigate the plants in it. The landscape will look much nicer if it is properly watered and with a little pre-planning, you can hide the sprinkler heads in among the hardscaping so they are almost never seen. They do need to be positioned so that they work properly but with directional heads and specialty parts, that is not too difficult to do.
Installing The System
The time to install a new irrigation system for your landscaping is during the installation of the land and hardscapes. The plumbing will run under the soil in the beds and if you wait to install it, you will need to tear up the beds, destroying all the hard work you already put into the landscaping. Try to plan for the irrigation system and install it when the landscape is being put in and put it in its own zone in the irrigation system so you can control the time it is on. You may not need as much watering on the landscape as you do on the lawn and this will allow better control of that.
Hiding The Sprinklers
If you plan out the system with the hardscape and landscape construction, you can run the supply lines so that the sprinkler heads are positioned in places that hide them when the system is not on. Placing the head behind a rock, under a bush, or close to a wall can all be great ways to hide the heads in the landscaping. Keep in mind that they head still need to function properly so if you hide them too well, you might be limiting the effectiveness of the sprinkler head. Plan ahead and carefully to create a system that works well but looks good.
Elevated Sprinkler Heads
In some situations, you may want to position elevated heads in the system. They are most often used to water large bushes and shrubs and the pipe and head can often be positioned behind or even in the shrub to make them harder to spot. Using darker pipe will sometimes hide it inside the bush as well. If you have a large rock or stone wall feature near the shrubs, consider positioning these heads behind them and use a head that will pop up over the top of the feature when the system comes on.
Specialty Sprinkler Heads
There are some pretty neat things available to help you put together a good looking hardscape or landscape with proper irrigation and little to no view of the sprinklers. You can get artificial rocks that have a sprinkler in them, colored pipe and sprinkler heads to help hide them, and many other pieces to help minimize the visual impact of the irrigation in your beds. If you are not sure what will work best, you can work with a landscape designer to get a plan for your new landscape that includes irrigation in it.
Talk to representatives at companies like Boehm Landscape Inc for more information.
Share21 July 2017
About a year ago, I realized that part of the reason the plants in my yard kept dying was the fact that they were planted in the wrong places. I didn't pay much attention to which plants needed certain amounts of light, and it was costing them their lives. Several of the plants were really struggling to live, and it was really hard to see. I realized that if I ever wanted to make things right, I would need to create a landscaping plan that would work well for the natural landscape of my yard. This blog is all about understanding landscaping.
