The other problem is that they tend to be rather ugly.
I used to think this about plants native to my area. However, there are a lot of nice ones - you just need to pick the ones you want to showcase. You won't be recreating the natural landscape, and you only need a few different plants. The other thing about plants native to your area is that some of them grow on the tops of hills (where there is less water than normal in a landscape) and some grow in gullies (where there is more). The local native plant society puts out a book of the native plants of the area which includes which ones need more or less water - perhaps yours does too. Unfortunately, they didn't include pictures in ours, but internet access fixes that, and they do include the time of year when each plant is "showy" (makes it easy to pick the ones that aren't as well). There are also some native nurseries which specialise in native plants.
Around here there is a move away from rocks because their removal tends to damage delicate ecosystems - particularly as the rounded ones (nice to walk on) come from rivers and streams (how they got rounded in the first place), which are already strained ecosystems in an arid environment.
Look to see whether there is an arid environment botanic garden near you - there tend to be a number in towns and cities around here, and they can really showcase some of the prettier native plants (although I have found some of the plantings pretty awful). Xeroscape gardens can also be good.
Gardens completely devoid of plants tend to be rather stark and bare and hot, so you are probably going to need to have some plantings. Plants also add height into the garden so it is not all at one level with the house as the only vertical change. Every plant is going to need some tender loving care for a few months after it is planted, but native plants often need less. Drippers are easy to install, give water only where it is needed, and here (where we have permanent water restrictions, each town advertises what level of water restriction they are on as you enter it, and sometimes we are only allowed to use grey water on the garden) drippers are usually about the only automatic watering device allowed. Even established plants need some water during a drought - the recent 8 year drought here left the government with thousands of established street trees that needed to be removed - but local native plants tend to survive better.