reduce your flood risk

Today's theme for Dunscore Fairtrade Village's "Big Green Week" photo is "Reduce Your Flood Risk". They say: "Across the UK 1.9 million people currently live in areas at risk from significant flooding. This number could double as early as the 2050s. Make a difference and avoid paving over gardens. Instead, replace hard surfaces with grass or plants."


As I have tried to convince insurance companies in the past, our house is not at risk from flooding. It sits on a hill and has been here, safe from floods, for 230 years. The insurance companies were worried because a burn runs down behind the house, about 200m away - it was once the site of a mill and the neighbouring house is called Millstream Cottage.

Another smaller and more seasonal burn runs down into this one and in times gone by, when cheap labour was plentiful, it was channelled under the front lawn with a series of ceramic pipes, which have broken in more recent years. The house was safe, but the lawn was always very soggy at this time of year, so I dug a small channel down the side of the lawn and now the water runs into what D calls the "dambo" (after a seasonal water feature in Zambia). Yesterday I went out and cleared the channel of leaves and weeds so that it could run freely. It will need doing a few times during the rainy season (ie from now until March). Today while taking this photo I noticed quite a few little birds around the dambo - chaffinch, wren, grey wagtail. Creating a pond is always good for wildlife.

Keeping water upstream, by making a dambo or by planting trees may not be saving us from flooding but it will help those downstream or us. Every autumn and winter there are floods in Dumfries, especially on the Whitesands, and this can only get worse as the climate continues to become milder and wetter.