This may be a good place to start.

--ian

Here is a link that might be useful: Airwells and dew ponds

I had read somewhere about something similar to the airwell that was illustrated in that lovely link. It was pyramidal in shape, made of stone, and act as a condenser for the moisture in the air. A small scale tree watering system (using the same idea) can be made with rocks piled up in heaps at the drip-line of trees. It has been called "rock mulch" but that has come to mean something else now. I think the airwell design looks cool. Kinda like a Medieval beehive hermit hut.

Fireraven9
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town. - Emily Dickinson

NEAT technology!

For a garden, they are a bit too large, needing to be 30+ feet square or so. But the buried pipes one, except for the digging required, might giove you enough to make the difference between dead trees and live ones - one device was collecting 60 lb water daily (appx 7 gallons).

That's what I was looking for! Thanks.

Hmmm...we get a lot of rounded loaf sized stones in our streams up here,("river cobbles" to stone masons. I wonder what would stop me from digging a ten foot conical dirt basin on the hillside above my garden with a plastic(or concrete) liner/bottom with a drain at the lowest part, and just mounding it with river cobbles?

Nothing except the engineering aspects: footings, stabilization so you don't have a rock slide when a kid climbs it or cold weather heaves it, etc. Also, your pile of rocks will become home to many different critters, some of which you may wish did not live there. Dirt will sift in, and weeds will grow. This is an old technology - that works so-so, takes a lot of resource investment and time. For hi tech, look at the stuff they are doing in Morocco to reclaim the Sahara.