I bear the badge proudly.
By way of introduction, here's a bit of xeriscape I put in a few years ago.
This line of tree aloes totals 12 plants, almost all of which I grew from seed. They are approximately 10 years old. As you can see the surrounding area was converted to pasture at some point. These plants all required a gopher cage (wire basket around the root core) and a bunny cage (chicken wire cylinder around the bottom of the plant) in order to survive the local herbivores.
After 2 or 3 years of infrequent water, they are now zero water plants. I am proud to say that all of them survived our driest year in recorded history (the winter before last) when we had 2.5 inches of rain, mostly in the winter, without a drop of water from me.