Joanna, Thanks very much for your kind comments! I and my wife Helena "designed" it, if you can call our fiddling with Nature designing, and we do all the gardening with occasional local help for heavy jobs, and for monthly watering in summer for newly planted non-native plants in their first year.
As we are there only for a "planting fortnight" in autumn, then a visit in mid-winter and one or with luck two visits in spring, it has to be minimum care. So yes, there are weeds between shrubs, which are mostly short-lived annuals. The only weeds we try to keep on top of are some of the prickliest perennials, and above all the big clump-forming grasses - I really enjoy "clumping" with a mattock!
We didn't originally prune the lentisks regularly but are now trying to do that (one of Helena's many fortes), and we find that makes a huge difference to the general appearance.
The grey-leaved shrubs are mostly local sages. If we've time do take off their old flowering shoots in autumn (or summer, but we're hardly ever there then - too hot for us if not the plants). Mostly we let them grow and grow; they do get too big or sprawling eventually and then we just take them out entirely.
We take off the ptilostemon seed heads when we've time (rare) as they self-seed everywhere otherwise.
