i'm a keen gardener, use buckets of water from the shower and bath to keep my garden alive, and i had about 80% of my plants DIE during our recent heatwave.

it's not realistic to keep a garden GREEN in the summer weather conditions we have in this city.

lawns need regular mowing to stay nice, they're a high maintenance garden plant and many varieties are very thirsty. Up to recently, it's only been legal to water here twice a week anyway.

i'm not sure your lease agreement is REALISTIC, but it's in writing, it's a legal document.

i hope the photo they took a week before you moved in, tallies with how the place looked when you moved in (not a photo taken YEARS before for example).

You can rectify the pruning (you're paying to get a gardener to do that), but i don't know how you can make a "lawn" of weeds, look like lush lawn by January, unless it all gets ripped out and new lawn is put in. And you don't know what the weather will be like for the next month anyway. Last few years MOST of summer here has been heatwave conditions.

i don't think your RE person or landlord is being realistic. you live in the driest state in teh driest continent, this is not northern hemisphere with heaps of rain!

whether you're a gardener or not, 43 degrees kills alot of garden plants. Heaps of mine turned into potato crips in one day - kaput.