Harvesting Rainwater in your Santa Fe Landscape

Successful gardeners in Santa Fe County apply various strategies to adapt to our low annual precipitation and intermittent drought. A major component of this is rainwater harvesting (RWH). This includes active RWH (capturing rainfall for later use) and passive RWH (directing rainfall to areas where it can be used more effectively). We’ll discuss the major principles of rainwater harvesting, a few tools that will assist in your RWH journey, and several structures you can construct in your residential landscape, including boomerang berms, stone channels, Zuni bowls, and rain gardens. At the end of the class, we’ll tour several of the passive RWH structures built by Santa Fe Extension Master Gardeners and by Santa Fe County to harvest rainwater and manage erosion at the Fairgrounds.