There's a bed in my garden that doesn't have drought problems. It's next to a couple of square metres of slightly sloping concrete. That bed not only gets its own rain, it gets the run off from the concrete. It's quite shady so all in all, it's about 3 times wetter than it should be. As soon as I realised this, I started giving it moisture loving plants that would stand no chance elsewhere in the garden and I rarely drag the watering can over to it!
So, if you're putting in any hard landscaping (patios, drives, etc) consider having it drain somewhere useful. Just a small gradient in the right direction could do it.
There may even be a legal advantage. A lot of people have been paving over their front gardens with designs that get rid of rainfall onto the road. The Local Authorities have got fed up with dealing with all that extra water and on 1st October 2008, they got the rules changed. To cut through the complexities, if your new driveway doesn't drain onto the road or the domestic drains it's cheaper and less complicated. For more detail, see here
