I’m a relatively new host on this site, and I’m always looking for ways to make my listing more attractive to sitters to ensure we will always have coverage when we travel, which is more frequently nowadays.
Feedback received from previous sitters suggests our property is a fair amount of work, so I started looking for ways to cut down on the workload. In addition, our last sitter didn’t do such a good job with watering the outdoor plants, and we came home to find about a dozen plants and ornamental trees dried up and dead.
The local plumbing supply store was quite helpful in providing me with information, parts and tools to install what turned out to be a 5 zone automatic drip irrigation system to water more than 90% of the outdoor plants on the property.
This task would formerly take up to an hour every 1-2 days depending on the weather. Now it’s completely automated and saves a ton of water over the typical spraying with a hose that puts a lot of water where you don’t need it. The drip system puts the water precisely on each plant and can be timed to apply the water late in the day or early in the morning, so it doesn’t evaporate quickly in the sun.
If you haven’t considered such a system, and your sitters are required to spend a good amount of time on your plants, or you’ve had bad experiences with past sitters not watering enough, or you want to free up some of your time, you may want to consider this. It’s a relatively inexpensive, fun and satisfying project.
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We have done a similar thing to our very small courtyard garden. We don’t have sitters at our home so when we travel it still gets watered. Also it is consistent watering whether we are there or not.
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This is very common in Australia and New Zealand and very much appreciated
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I spent quite some time (and money) putting together a drip irrigation system with timings etc and then went away for a couple of weeks, only to find that some of the connections and taps had come apart and plants had dried out while the decking was regularly watered!
I thought it was just me but I then did a sitting with an owner who proudly showed me his identical system. He then went on to ask me to check all of the taps and connections daily as they sometimes came apart. He was right - they didn’t work!
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You gotta make everything really tight, maybe even giving each connection a bit of an extra twist with a pair of pliars. I haven’t had any leaking connections over 5 zones and over 100 emitters. The only issues were one broken plastic connector where the emitter hose connects to the large irrigation pipe (I probably stepped on it), and I forgot to put an emitter connector into a hole I had punched in the line so water was spitting out the hole and depriving the other emitters of pressure until I found it.
But the system does need to monitored regularly for clogs, to be sure the plants are being properly watered with no excess flooding and water working it’s way into areas it’s not needed.
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I’ve sat twice at a home with such a system and it worked without a hitch — I never watered anything and all stayed alive well.
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I agree, our irrigation system has been a huge help, despite occasional clogs and, three times over summer, gophers chewing through the PVC. We travel a lot in the hot, dry fall and always came home to a brown garden. We tried sprinklers and hand watering but no clear system in place, and our sheep would knock the sprinklers around 
We now return home to a beautiful, healthy garden. It’s such a pleasure for everyone! We also have a very attentive landscaper come once a month, sometimes during a sit. Thankfully he was there last week to notice our septic tank was overflowing during a sit. Yikes. We were able to have it sorted that day thankfully!
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