Abstract

An experiment was set up to determine the effects of treated municipal wastewater irrigation and fertilization on growth, leaf morphological characteristics, chlorophyll content, and ion uptake of three container-grown landscape shrubs characterized by different growth habits (Abutilon ‘Kentish Belle’, Viburnum tinus ‘French White’, Weigelia florida ‘Bouquet Rose’). The study was conducted in Tuscany (Central Italy) in a typical landscape plant production area. One-hundred plants per species were watered with treated sewage effluent from the nearby wastewater treatment facility (RW) and 100 with well water after ponding (WW) from the nursery where the research plots were located. Fifty plants per species and within each irrigation treatment received controlled-release fertilizer application at transplant and 50 received no fertilization. The experiment showed no major limitations to the use of sprinkle-irrigated wastewater for container-grown landscape plant production and a general, positive, influence on growth of the plants. However, the species under observation showed a different behavior in response to the effluent irrigation for all the parameters considered. Weigelia was the most responsive and Abutilon the least. The influence of fertilizer addition at transplanting was less evident and the combined effect of RW and fertilization was rarely found and seemed to be species-specific.