Lawns are turning brown, playing fields are becoming dustbowls and residents are cutting back on household water use as water restrictions prompted by the continuing drought intensify.

Parched front and backyards in regional towns across central and western parts of New South Wales are particularly under strain from the big dry, and could be pushed to the brink as councils clamp down on sprinkler use, ban the watering of lawns or mandate the use of only grey water for this purpose.

Orange, Armidale and Tamworth have moved to stage four water restrictions in recent months.

Tamworth’s Chaffey Dam has dropped to a capacity of 24.2% and Armidale’s Malpas Dam to 51% while at Orange, the combined storage of the Suma Park and Spring Creek dams is at 35.99%.

The Tamworth mayor, Col Murray, says that if nothing changes, the town of 62,000 people will have about a year’s supply of water left.

“If it doesn’t rain, we’ll inevitably go to level five restrictions. That will happen before Christmas,” he says.

Sue McLean, a former Tamworth nursery owner, says there are no green nature strips in town and a lot of plants that have been coping with the dry conditions are now succumbing to winter frost.

“People find it difficult in the winter time because although you may be able to bucket grey water, if it’s already dark and cold when you get home from work, the last thing you want to do is go out and bucket water,” she says.

“The elderly can’t do that. It’s heartbreaking because they are house proud and keen gardeners.”

At her grandchildren’s primary school, pupils have to eat their lunch inside because the playground has become too dusty. For the next couple of weeks, the school has arranged with the council for the children to be taken to a public park across the street to play on the grass.

McLean says people in Tamworth had been “scoffing” when they read headlines in January that Sydney residents could be hit with a $40 increase in water bills. It’s an insignificant amount, she says, when compared with price increases in regional areas.

“Once upon a time it was government for everybody and you weren’t crucified for living in a less urban area,” she says.

Almost two hours south at Murrurundi, water restrictions have been at level six since July last year.

Residents have been asked to reduce their water consumption from an average of 166 litres per person per day to 140 litres.

Upper Hunter shire councillor Josh Brown says people have been encouraged to have three-minute showers and reduce their washing-machine use to two loads a week.

“If you’ve got a family of four, or five or six, that’s pretty tough,” he says.

“If you’re having a bath or bathing your kids, you can have one 10cm deep bath per person per day.”

In January, the council started carting water to Murrurundi, which has a population of about 1,000. The bulk of its water supply comes from an emergency bore and the town is pinning hopes on a pipeline project to Scone next year.

Walgett, west of Tamworth, has had to rely on bore water for drinking for almost 18 months after the rivers ran dry.

Level five water restrictions started on Thursday, mandating that only grey water could be used for residential gardens, car washing and window cleaning.

This week, the town’s only supermarket burnt down, prompting the NSW agriculture minister, Adam Marshall, to tell state parliament the township “is on its knees”.

Walgett shire deputy mayor Ian Woodcock says the mood in town “is not very good”.

Drought conditions delayed the start of the local rugby league season because the ground was too dry. Tens of thousands of dollars have gone into re-grassing the football field, with a grant from the NRL.

“We couldn’t water it this year, we had to let most of it die,” Woodcock says. “We’ve started to water it again [with bore water] and it’s starting to come good.”

Bathurst adopted stage three water restrictions last November and the council is considering more drastic measures in coming months, while Sydney-siders were hit with stage one water restrictions at the start of June.

Garden Clubs of Australia president George Hoad has a six-acre garden on the mid-north NSW coast. He has planted drought-hardy succulents and cacti. Photograph: George Hoad

Garden Clubs of Australia president George Hoad, who frequently travels around NSW and interstate inspecting gardens, says climate change and drought will force a dramatic rethink of how Australians plan their garden.

“When you’ve had a garden you’ve created or it was your parents’ and it’s been there for 30, 40, 50, 60 years and suddenly there is no water to water those shrubs and trees and plants, and you have to watch them die one by one – it’s like losing a child in some ways, it’s very difficult,” he says.

“We can’t have the elaborate English gardens anymore … I love big English colourful borders, but they are just not practical. So my remedy is to slip across to the Chelsea Flower show every second year and visit some English gardens.”

Hoad began establishing his six-acre garden on the NSW’s mid-north coast near Taree in 2005 and is reliant on water tanks and a half-full dam to keep it alive.

“I’ve had to pull back a bit on more extravagant plantings of annuals, perennials, lots of colour, that’s gone hand-in-hand with the drought over the past four or five years,” he says. “You dig a hole and it’s bone dry.”

Despite the gloomy climate outlook, he is amazed by the resilience of gardeners. “Always with a smile on their face, they say ‘oh it might rain next week’,” he says.

A stumpery with some fairly tough shade-loving plants in George Hoad’s garden. Photograph: George Hoad

Water restrictions outside NSW aren’t as tough.

In Western Australia, there is a winter sprinkler ban in place for Perth, Mandurah and the state’s south-west including Albany.

Melbourne’s water storage is at 49.9%, its lowest level since 2011 when the city was still recovering from the millennium drought.

Melbourne Water says the downward trend in storage levels over the past five years reflects population-driven growth in demand and less water entering reservoirs.

While Melbourne does not have water restrictions, there is a voluntary target for householders to reduce their consumption to 155 litres per person per day.

The Victorian opposition wants a return to restrictions for the city but the state government has ruled that out for now.

Instead, the Andrews government ordered in March for 125 gigalitres of water (or the equivalent of 55,500 Olympic swimming pools) for the 2019-20 financial year from the state’s desalination plant.

In Tasmania, a lack of significant rain and continuing dry conditions on King Island have resulted in TasWater extending level two water restrictions for Currie until 30 June.

South Australia has permanent “water wise” measures, which allow households to water gardens and lawns by hand at any time with a trigger nozzle hose, a watering can, bucket, or a drip-feed irrigation system. Sprinklers can be used for watering before 10am, or after 5pm.