Royal Horticultural Society: The emergency RHS plans protecting its gardens from future droughts: ‘We have to adapt to the new normal’
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has announced emergency measures to protect its gardens from the growing threat of water shortages.
The environmental charity, which manages five key public gardens across England, confirmed on Saturday it would prioritize investment in water capture and management projects throughout 2026 in direct response to last year’s severe droughts.
Amid increasingly variable weather conditions, the RHS is encouraging home gardeners to take similar preparedness measures this winter and spring to maximize rainwater collection.
These include creating rain gardens, installing rainwater tanks, and carefully considering plant placement, as well as soil preparation techniques such as burrowing, cut-and-drop, and mulching.
The initiative comes as global warming continues to fuel volatility in the global water cycle, leading to more frequent below-average rainfall across the UK and an increased risk of flooding.
Last year saw the driest spring and hottest summer on record in the last 132 years; This has plunged many parts of the country into drought conditions; some of these areas were still recovering in late January.
Anticipating future periods of drought, the RHS is currently reviewing water allocation strategies at its famous gardens: Wisley in Surrey, Hyde Hall in Essex, Rosemoor in Devon, Harlow Carr in North Yorkshire and Bridgewater in Greater Manchester.
Projects in 2026 will include increasing water storage in tanks and lakes, installing tide benches to reduce water use in retail centers, and investing in rain garden installations.
The charity will also carry out research on soil health in its gardens and continue to measure water use by individual plants and the entire landscape.
It will also look into using more greywater, or cleaner wastewater, from baths, showers, sinks and washing machines.
The plans mark a broader shift in the organisation’s approach to climate change; as the organization increasingly focuses on adapting to the growing impacts on reducing the rise in planet-warming emissions in the atmosphere.
Tim Upson, RHS Director of Horticulture, said: “Water is the lifeblood of any garden – important not only for human health and wellbeing, but also for the wider environment and wildlife – and like 34 million gardeners in the UK, we are having to adapt to the new normal, prioritizing the collection, storage and management of rainwater, as well as redeploying and repurposing our collections to make them future-proof.”
Mr Upson said the charity’s updated water management plan had “gone down to the nitty gritty” of where every last bucket of water could be used in each garden.
“That’s the reality of the situation that we have to prepare for, and we would be foolish not to,” he said.
To understand what grows in their own gardens and provide advice to British gardeners, the RHS also records the water use of different garden landscapes, including trees, herbaceous perennial borders, fine lawns and vegetable gardens.
The charity said it uses this information to predict future water use patterns for these sites and prepare for future cultivation and water resource management as climate change accelerates.
“There is a sweet spot between the resilience of plants to withstand drier periods by providing less water, but there is also the potential to stress a plant and leave them susceptible to plant health problems, not to mention reduced flower diversity, which has a knock-on effect on wildlife and people,” Mr Upson added.
