What to Do With Your Garden After a Hosepipe Ban

Hosepipe bans have become a regular feature of UK summers, and for many gardeners this year’s restrictions meant watching plants and lawns struggle with little you could legally do about it. Whether your ban has just lifted or is still in place, here’s how to manage your garden through it and recover once it ends.

First, check your ban is actually still active

Hosepipe ban start and end dates vary by water company and region, and restrictions can lift with surprisingly little notice once reservoir and river levels recover. Before doing anything, check your specific water company’s current guidance — a ban in one part of the country doesn’t mean it applies everywhere, and neighbouring postcodes can be under different water companies with different rules.

What’s usually still allowed during a ban

Hosepipe bans typically restrict the use of a hosepipe connected to the mains for garden watering, but most water companies still permit:

• Watering with a watering can, filled from a tap or water butt
• Using water butts and stored rainwater freely, since it isn’t mains supply
• Grey water reuse — water from washing up, baths, or cooking (once cooled), applied by hand
• Watering hanging baskets and containers by hand in most cases, since these dry out fastest and often have specific exemptions

Always check your own water company’s exact rules, since some allow watering food-producing plants (fruit and vegetables) by hosepipe even during a ban, given the different priority placed on food growing.

Prioritising what to water by hand

If you’re limited to a watering can, focus your effort where it matters most:

1. Newly planted trees, shrubs, and perennials (anything planted in the last 1–2 years) — these have shallow root systems and are far more vulnerable than established plants
2. Fruit and vegetables, particularly at flowering and fruiting stages
3. Containers and hanging baskets, which dry out fastest and have no access to groundwater
4. Anything in a raised bed, for the same reason

Lawns are usually the lowest priority. As covered in our lawn recovery guide, most UK lawn grasses go dormant rather than dying outright, and will typically recover once the ban lifts and rain returns.

Making the most of what water you do have

• Water at dawn or dusk, when evaporation is lowest and more of what you apply actually reaches the roots
• Water deeply but less often, rather than little and frequently — this encourages roots to grow deeper in search of moisture, making plants more resilient
• Mulch after watering to lock moisture into the soil rather than letting it evaporate straight back out
• Group containers together in a shadier spot during the hottest part of the day to reduce how often they need watering

Once the ban lifts

• Resist the urge to blast everything with the hose immediately. A sudden flood of water after prolonged drought can actually stress plants and encourage shallow rooting. Stick to the same deep, infrequent watering approach.
• Assess damage properly before making changes — many plants that looked dead during the ban will recover once normal watering resumes, so hold off on removing or replacing anything until you’ve given it a few weeks.
• Top up water butts as soon as rain returns, so you’re not starting from empty if restrictions come back next summer.

Reducing how much a future ban affects you

If this year’s ban was a wake-up call, a few changes make the next one considerably less stressful:

• Water butts connected to downpipes — even one or two average-sized butts store a meaningful amount of water for hand-watering priority plants during a ban
• Mulching beds annually to reduce how fast soil dries out in the first place
• Choosing drought-tolerant plants for anything new you plant, so future dry spells are less of a crisis
• Grouping plants by water needs so you’re not trying to keep thirsty and drought-tolerant plants alive side by side with limited water

We’ll cover water butts and rainwater harvesting setup, along with drought-tolerant planting choices, in the next guides.

The bottom line

A hosepipe ban limits how you water, not whether your garden survives. Hand-watering with a can, prioritising vulnerable plants, and using stored or grey water gets most gardens through without lasting damage — and it’s a good prompt to set up water storage so the next ban is less of a scramble.