Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster

Water Harvesting Design Certification Course – Tucson, Arizona
2026-10-05 - 2026-10-17 | AZ
For more info on this Watershed Management Group course, plus how to register see:
https://watershedmg.org/events/water-harvesting-design-certification-october-2026

Brad will teach October 12, and he will also offer a guided tour of his place and some of his neighborhood’s rain-irrigated native food forest work, Sunday October 18th.
Sign up for the tour here.

Guided Water-Harvesting Home & Neighborhood Block Tour with Brad Lancaster – Tucson, AZ
2026-10-18 08:00 - 10:00 (America/Phoenix)
WHEN: 8am – 10am, Sunday, October 18, 2026
WHERE: 813 N. 9th Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85705
COST: $15 per person. Must pay/register in advance. No-shows cannot be refunded.
Limited number of spaces. First paid, first served.

I will post a BUY BUTTON here about a month before the event

Come tour with the guy who wrote the books on water harvesting and more!
Brad Lancaster, author of the just released, full-color, revised editions of his award-winning books “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volumes 1 and 2” will guide this tour of he and his brother’s family’s water-harvesting & landscape design award-winning 1/8th-acre urban property and surrounding block of the neighborhood.
100,000 gallons of rain and stormwater is harvested annually on the property and in the adjoining public right-of-way. You’ll see examples of:
• an integrated “tiny house” where a one-car garage was converted into a cottage or “garottage” that passive heats and cools itself for free with well-designed winter sun access & summer shading. 75% of its building materials were salvaged from the waste stream;
• solar cooking, solar water heating, and solar power;
• legal & inexpensive site-built composting toilets, which helped legalize such toilets state-wide;
• organic gardens getting 95+% of their irrigation needs met by harvested rainwater;
• inexpensive gravity-fed rainwater harvesting systems providing safe & delicious rainwater for all domestic needs including drinking – with no expensive pumps or mechanical filtration systems;
• extensive gravity-fed greywater harvesting systems turning “waste” waters into resource waters.
• how a joyous 20 plus-years of car-free life has been possible (cargo bicycle is key), and saves over $8,000 annually
In the neighborhood part of the tour you’ll see:
• water-harvesting traffic-calming features that helped turn a dangerous streets into welcoming bicycle boulevards,
• street-runoff harvesting strategies that use street runoff to freely irrigate street trees and control flooding – and new evolutions and improvements on these strategies
• learn how these once “pre-legal” street runoff-harvesting strategies were legalized, rebated, and mandated
• native food forests doubling as wildlife and pollinator corridors that canopy over public foot paths,
• how an annual neighborhood rain and tree planting effort has resulted in the planting of over 1,800 trees and thousands of understory plants in the neighborhood
• how a county grant helped pay for water-harvesting strategies harvesting over 1 million gallons of annual stormwater in and along the streets
• how a neighborhood-organized Neighborhood Foresters program is training up the neighborhood to steward these features and is implementing more.
• public art & other strategies reclaiming the commons for more life!

Brad will also be selling (at deep discount) & signing copies of
• the newly released & revised, full-color editions of his award-winning books
• the new SPANISH EDITION of his book Cosecha de agua de lluvia para zonas áridas y más allá
• Plant the Rain t-shirts, caps, and stickers
• Siembra la lluvia caps and stickers

For self-guided water tours in Tucson see:
https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/tour/

Here is a video of a 2016 tour of my place (more evolutions have since occurred)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcAMXm9zITg&t=15s

Water Harvesting Design Certification Course – Tucson, Arizona
2026-11-09 - 2026-11-21
For more info on this Watershed Management Group course, plus how to register see:
https://watershedmg.org/events/water-harvesting-design-certification-november-2026

Brad will teach November 16, and he will also offer a guided tour of his place and some of his neighborhood’s rain-irrigated native food forest work, Sunday October 18th.
Sign up for the tour here.

Guided Water-Harvesting Home & Neighborhood Block Tour with Brad Lancaster – Tucson, AZ
2026-11-22 08:00 - 10:00
WHEN: 8am – 10am, Sunday, November 22, 2026
WHERE: 813 N. 9th Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85705
COST: $15 per person. Must pay/register in advance. No-shows cannot be refunded.
Limited number of spaces. First paid, first served.

I will post a BUY BUTTON here about a month before the event

Come tour with the guy who wrote the books on water harvesting and more!
Brad Lancaster, author of the just released, full-color, revised editions of his award-winning books “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volumes 1 and 2” will guide this tour of he and his brother’s family’s water-harvesting & landscape design award-winning 1/8th-acre urban property and surrounding block of the neighborhood.
100,000 gallons of rain and stormwater is harvested annually on the property and in the adjoining public right-of-way. You’ll see examples of:
• an integrated “tiny house” where a one-car garage was converted into a cottage or “garottage” that passive heats and cools itself for free with well-designed winter sun access & summer shading. 75% of its building materials were salvaged from the waste stream;
• solar cooking, solar water heating, and solar power;
• legal & inexpensive site-built composting toilets, which helped legalize such toilets state-wide;
• organic gardens getting 95+% of their irrigation needs met by harvested rainwater;
• inexpensive gravity-fed rainwater harvesting systems providing safe & delicious rainwater for all domestic needs including drinking – with no expensive pumps or mechanical filtration systems;
• extensive gravity-fed greywater harvesting systems turning “waste” waters into resource waters.
• how a joyous 20 plus-years of car-free life has been possible (cargo bicycle is key), and saves over $8,000 annually
In the neighborhood part of the tour you’ll see:
• water-harvesting traffic-calming features that helped turn a dangerous streets into welcoming bicycle boulevards,
• street-runoff harvesting strategies that use street runoff to freely irrigate street trees and control flooding – and new evolutions and improvements on these strategies
• learn how these once “pre-legal” street runoff-harvesting strategies were legalized, rebated, and mandated
• native food forests doubling as wildlife and pollinator corridors that canopy over public foot paths,
• how an annual neighborhood rain and tree planting effort has resulted in the planting of over 1,800 trees and thousands of understory plants in the neighborhood
• how a county grant helped pay for water-harvesting strategies harvesting over 1 million gallons of annual stormwater in and along the streets
• how a neighborhood-organized Neighborhood Foresters program is training up the neighborhood to steward these features and is implementing more.
• public art & other strategies reclaiming the commons for more life!

Brad will also be selling (at deep discount) & signing copies of
• the newly released & revised, full-color editions of his award-winning books
• the new SPANISH EDITION of his book Cosecha de agua de lluvia para zonas áridas y más allá
• Plant the Rain t-shirts, caps, and stickers
• Siembra la lluvia caps and stickers

For self-guided water tours in Tucson see:
https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/tour/

Here is a video of a 2016 tour of my place (more evolutions have since occurred)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcAMXm9zITg&t=15s
