Don't water your sidewalks or paths

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In your enthusiasm to water your plants, it's very poor garden design to water your sidewalks or paths. Not only is it a waste of water, of course, but water does damage to paths, makes it difficult for people to walk if it's wet and slippery, and just plain looks clumsy.

I had a visitor to The Tropical Paradise yesterday who noticed that a fair amount of spray was going onto my flagstone, and while she was only joking when she said, *that's not very green!*, she was absolutely right. It is something that I have overlooked for a long time, and I am in the process of fixing it.

This takes some finesse, but isn't that what gardening is all about? There are lots of different sprayer heads. And one that I had forgotten about until recently is the adjustable type. In the narrowest part of the garden, about where Macintosh, the good little wiener dog is looking, is where the adjustable sprayer heads will be installed. Actually, I have already done one, and it worked great. So now I have to go to Home Depot and get another one.

The reason that you are seeing so much overspray to the left is because I have trimmed back the cannas very hard. When there was a *solid wall* of cannas, the spray didn't get to the path. But the spray doesn't need to be strong enough to throw five feet, only a couple of feet. And that is where the adjustable sprayer head comes in.
After - and the water was on full blast when this photo was taken

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