SmartGardenwatering.org.au was created by the University of Melbourne with the help of a Smart Water Fund Round 3 grant to help gardeners in Melbourne be more efficient in their garden watering habits.

The University of Melbourne has received a Round 6 grant to expand SmartGardenWatering.org.au to support the creation of online gardening communities. The aim of this to significantly improve water conservation in domestic garden water use by creating a sophisticated web-based tool to allow people to model and share garden and water conservation information.

At the heart of the tool will be the existing garden water demand and irrigation model based on significant horticultural research developed in the Round 3 project.

This will be combined with the latest online community building Internet tools to enable domestic gardeners to form communities unconstrained by physical distance where gardeners can model, save, edit, locate, compare and discuss their gardens in the context of water conservation. Users will be able to save their garden models, explore other gardens using a 'Google Maps' style interface, and provide advice for other gardeners.

Web 2.0 technologies now provides the opportunity to utilise the social networking capability of the web to allow the SmartGardenWatering tool to drive behavioural change in how water is used in home gardens.

The key aims of the project include encouraging a reduction in water use based on appropriate landscaping and information sharing amongst the community and encouraging the creation of online communities that take an active interest in waterwise gardening.

Visit the new website: http://www2.smartgardenwatering.org.au/