Clear understanding of the ‘nature’ part of our urban water supply is a necessary but insufficient condition of making it sustainable. All elements of the network also need to be made visible. Water is now an important issue in both consciousness and practice of suburban householders. In our broader study, water contrasts with a number of other environmental issues that stimulate more polarised responses. Commitments to reducing water consumption are manifest in a variety of changed practices, many of which are hidden in the rhythms of daily life and can only be unearthed using qualitative research methodologies. Such methodologies also allow contradictions to be brought to light. The strongest example here is that aspirations towards water conservation are in tension with the pleasure derived from water, and expressed desires for more watery environments. 

The presence and the value of the garden is not coincidental in these practices. The backyard garden is not a passive backdrop against which pre-existing attitudes are played out. Rather it is in the relationship between house and garden that people see, understand and participate in the network of water storage and distribution. Their active engagement with these processes enhances their capacity to manage and reduce consumption. They know their own power and they understand where and how to make a difference. To the extent that the garden or favourite plants are particularly valued, they are willing to make sacrifices, and to inject their own labour into the water network. This may explain why recent per-capita water consumption in separate houses with gardens in Sydney is little different from that of apartments and units (Troy, Holloway and Randolph 2005). On the other hand, domestic gardens, like other parts of our living spaces, are also sites of desire and consumption where intentions can come undone.

There is little support in this evidence for the construal of gardens themselves as environmental problems, and considerable support for the idea that more localised strategies for water collection, storage and distribution are likely to garner more support and active connections than Big Water schemes such as new dams. The widespread evidence of willingness to change practices suggests that there is underlying support for stronger government action on water, provided it is done in a way that maintains and utilises these human connections. The different scale of analysis provided by domestic ethnography adds a broader range of potential solutions to the complex issues of sustainable urban water supply. The everyday, habitual nature of human engagements with the non-human world provides an underrated human resource of considerable potential in the necessary shifts towards more sustainable cities. It should be regarded with cautious optimism.