But our summers are almost Mediterranean or Californian - it's not unusual for July and August to go by without any measurable rainfall. On average, Victoria, in the rain shadow of the Olympic Peninsula, gets just half of the rainfall of Vancouver on the mainland only 40 miles away on the west-facing slopes of the Coast Mountains. So we need to water our gardens. There is the old standby, the oscillating or rotating lawn sprinkler. Besides being horribly inconsistent in coverage, these simply deliver water too fast, in drops too large for our flowers, and can do a lot of damage.
Nothing looks more pitiful than a once-proud peony that has been hit with a sprinkler.
Unless you have a very small garden, you just can't keep up with hand watering. These are made from recycled tires, and are porous, allowing water to ooze through the walls of the hose. They are laid on the ground around the base of the plants, and drip water directly onto the soil. Weeper hoses are a low-tech alternative to proper drip systems. They aren't as accurate, because water comes out along the whole length of the hose rather than at specific points - so they use more water than drip systems.