We have a project in Scandinavia, where there are no local authority requirements about landscaping. The site is industrial in a rural location. The typical landscape planting is pretty much to leave things in their natural state (a mixture of glassland, shrubs and trees) and perhaps add a few planters and flower boxes for decoration. We plan to introduce some turf, to be irrigated entirely by captured rainwater (by hand, no hard-wired irrigation system). I understand that we can get 2 credits for the rainwater irrigation, but I am at a loss on how we could improve the landscaping to get 4 credits. If we elminate the turf and have natural, unirrigated meadow, we would have to exclude that area, since we'd be returning the area into its natural state. I'm referring to a CIR from 2004 and 2007 which states that
"A project may not include planted areas in the irrigation calculations if these areas are intended to be left in a natural state, and not therefore require irrigation. Only landscaped areas can be included in the calculations for this project."
The only other aspect that one can adjust is the irrigation efficiency, but the Ref Guide does not say anything about the efficiency of conventional hand irrigation on an as-needed basis.
Anybody have any experience with this?