Drier conditions & water restrictions - what to do?

I've heard various dire predictions about dry conditions becoming more
prevalent, water shortages, hosepipe bans and even severe water use
resrictions. I live in the South-East where we seem to have much more of a
problem with this.

One person I spoke to said they would only plant drought-resistant plants
now. I've been looking at what is available that is said to have greater
drought resistance than average. One email from Crocus gave this url for a
list of such plants:

http://www.crocus.co.uk/findplant/selectionresults/?PlantCategoryID=0&ValueID=
&ValueID=&ValueID=&ValueID=&ValueID=33&ValueID=&ValueID=&x=23&y=13&affiliate=c
u112

which is a very long url! It leads to over four hundred search results. Some
of these seem to be wrong where for example the plant is described as liking
moist soil and needing watering in dry periods (not just whilst getting
established), but I would hope that most are correct.

We have a hosepipe ban here commencing in April and some nearby SE counties
are considering more severe restrictions on water use. I'm getting a water
*** installed and will be pumping any used bathwater intro it and pouring
water from washing-up into it too. I wish my water *** was already
installed- we seem to have many days of rain commencing today.... You can get
quite good weather forecast information from the Metcheck web site- even a
week or so ahead, which is much further ahead than the usual weather forecats
sites:

http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/HOME/

Has anyone got any good ideas for dealing with drier conditions, water
restrictions etc?

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