Most established in-ground plants handle a week without watering better than people expect, especially with a bit of mulch and cooler weather. The real risk is concentrated in containers, which dry out far faster than garden soil because there's less soil volume holding moisture and pots often sit exposed to sun and wind on all sides. A hot, dry week in summer is a genuinely different risk than the same week in the middle of winter.
The real risk is concentrated in containers, which dry out far faster than garden soil because there's less soil volume holding moisture and pots often sit exposed to sun and wind on all sides.
The single most effective prep step is grouping containers together in a shaded spot before you leave, rather than just watering more right before departure. Grouping pots reduces the exposed surface area drying out in the sun and raises humidity around the leaves, and moving them out of direct afternoon sun, even temporarily under a verandah or against a shaded wall, meaningfully slows evaporation. A thick layer of mulch on top of the potting mix, and on any exposed garden soil, also slows moisture loss significantly.
For actual water delivery while you're away, a few options scale with how long you're gone and how much you want to spend. Simple wicking systems, a length of cotton rope or capillary matting running from a filled container into the pot, can keep smaller pots going reasonably well for a week. Purpose-made self-watering globes or spikes, glass or plastic bulbs filled with water and pushed into the soil, work similarly for individual pots. For a larger number of plants, an inexpensive tap-timer connected to a drip irrigation line is the most reliable option and is worth the investment for anyone who travels regularly, since it removes the guesswork entirely.
If none of that is available, the low-tech fallback that still works is asking a neighbour, family member or friend to check in once or twice during the week specifically to water containers, since they dry out fastest; established garden beds are usually fine unmonitored. Give them a genuinely specific job, which pots, how much water, roughly how often, since a vague "just keep an eye on things" ask is easy for someone else to forget.
Vegetable gardens need a bit more thought than ornamental plants, because a week of stress at the wrong moment can affect the crop, not just the plant. Fruiting vegetables like tomatoes and capsicums are especially prone to blossom end rot when watering is inconsistent, a dry week followed by a big soak on return, so a steady watering setup matters more for these than for hardier plants. Leafy vegetables like lettuce and spinach are shallow-rooted and dry out and bolt faster than deeper-rooted crops, so they benefit most from mulch and shade if a dry week is coming.
The day before leaving, give everything a deep, thorough watering rather than a quick surface sprinkle, so moisture has time to soak down to the root zone before you go. Skip fertilising right before a trip; a stressed, drying plant with an unused dose of fertiliser sitting in the soil is more likely to suffer fertiliser burn than to benefit from the feed.