Your garden and lawn won't survive without water and fertilizer. Well, that's not really true. You can do without fertilizer sometimes; but you can't do without water.
Anyway, water keeps your plants alive and fertilizer makes your plants healthier.
Living in an area with seasonal rains can be an advantage. If enough rain falls, your garden will retain that water for days to come. However, you don't want to put a dam around your garden as this will drain the plants. The water will eventually evaporate or seep downwards. The important thing is that your plants are not flooded and that the soil is good enough to retain some moisture.If you see water pooling in parts of your lawn, you might want to look into the possibility of improving the soil quality so that water drains off faster while retaining moisture at the same time.
The drain can be a physical drain where water will flow into. You can place a system of canals going towards the drain so that your garden and lawn does not get saturated. If you have a fish pond in your lawn, you can direct excess water towards the pond. The excess in the pond will go out through the pond drain.
For very large plots of land like those 2 acre yards in New England, digging a mini ditch around the edges of the yard will help in water drain management. You can line the ditch with anything from small pebbles all the way to flowering bushes.
At any rate, it would be better to design your lawn so that it gently slopes down from your house walls all the way to the sidewalk or street. When it rains, the rainwater will just go down that slope which will leave your lawn relatively free of saturation. It will also protect the foundations of your house. If water does not go underneath your house foundations, it won't erode the soil and rocks that your house sits on. Since the flow of water will be more or less even over your lawn, your garden will receive excellent water distribution.
If the seasonal rainfall you get isn't enough to give your lawn the moisture it needs, you can install a sprinkler system. The sprinkler system can be turned on about 15 minutes in a day. You can do this maybe 2 or 3 times a week depending on the moisture retention levels of your lawn.
In places like Arizona where the climate is arid, daily sprinkling of water for 15 minutes will do your lawn good. If your lawn is in California or some such other state, the 2 to 3 times per week system will be good enough to keep the soil moist. Finally, you can set the sprinkler system to do this automatically. You can even set the sprinkler to work irregularly. You can schedule different days of the week for the sprinklers to spout water. For example, for this week, you can set Monday as watering day and set Tuesday next week as the next watering day.
It is best to water your garden and lawn early in the mornings. The surroundings would still be cool so water won't evaporate too much. This will give the soil time to absorb water properly and retain moisture later. Watering plants in the evenings contribute to the growth of weeds and will attract insect life. Watering plants at noon when it is very hot could only bring harm to your plants.
As the day grows hotter, the plant closes the pores in their leaves in order to keep the water in them from evaporating. The water droplets can also act as a magnifying glass to focus the light of the sun and burn your plants.
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