The water crisis in the world has escalated. In the past few decades, water has become scarcer and more necessary than ever before. We always thought it was a never ending resource that would be available whenever and wherever we wanted it. We diverted water from rivers to provide irrigation for fields, we diverted more so growing cities could have drinking water and even more so the people of those cities could wash their cars and water their lawns. We thought nothing of wasting water because there was an endless supply. Now we know there is not.

Now we find ourselves in a global water crisis. Cities and countries have massive water-availability problems. And increasingly, our water is so polluted we cannot use it until we spend millions of dollars to treat it. Many of us do not even drink our tap water. We buy bottled water at prices higher than gasoline.

In the United States, many communities have enacted regulations governing residents’ use of water. Some people can water their lawns once a week or wash their cars only on alternate Saturdays. In other countries water is restricted completely, so no water can be used outside the house. People are learning to recycle their gray water, the water that is used in for showering or doing dishes, so they can use it on their gardens. Recycling gray water is a great idea, but illegal in some parts of America.

Most of us, when faced with a global crisis, say, “There’s nothing one person can do, so I will just ignore it.” But there is something you can do. You can still have a magnificent landscape without overusing water. If you think that having a pond is a water-consuming hobby, you are wrong. It takes very little water to top off a pond. It takes hundreds of gallons of water to keep a lawn green.