Help me revive my mum's moonscape

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My dear little mum has bequeathed me her garden, including this bare, sad moonscape. She had Plans (she was an excellent gardener) but didn't have the opportunity to share them, and now I'm left staring glumly at all the gravel and wishing I had asked her. Would anyone have any ideas?
Potentially helpful information:
It gets HOT. Very hot.
The garden has lots of bindweed, hence the gravel. So I don't mind hacking into the ground to plant, but I don't want to get rid of the gravel completely lest the bindweed should sneak back.
I do love the clematis (just coming back into bud) but I am not adverse to replacing it with year around evergreen.

Embryonic ideas:
Go with the desert theme- a cordyline? Other beach type plants?
Do what I did with my last expanse of bare wall, which was to stick a winter jasmine and a pyracantha in it.
I would like year around green.
Open to more informed ideas.

I’m not a great gardener but think that phormium/cordyline/various grasses or similar would work well here - several different colours and almost indestructible

Great ideas- thank you, @Eviebeans

I'm definitely a member of the "hit and hope" school of gardening and some of my best results have been when I have just tried something and it has worked. It might be possible to grow things like courgettes or aubergines, tomatoes there if it gets hot as long as you have a water source.

I'd go with a mediterranean theme - they'll do well in the hot and with the gravel. Rosemary, lavender, santolina (grey and green), phormium, bellota, irises, would all do well and give you year round structure and colour.

You’d also be able to grow Eryngium species - lots of amazing colour there. Are you hooked on green or would greys, silvers and blues suffice?

@Eviebeans , 'Hit and Hope' - I love that.
@CatherinedeBourgh , great ideas; I shall get googling.
@MereDintofPandiculation - I think our interests have a huge overlap - we have 'met' on another, sadder board - nice to see you again. Greys and blues sound stylish and I shall pursue...

Google 'Beth Chatto dry garden' for some planting inspiration.

You could also try some grasses and maybe some Dierama - mine did really well in my poor sandy soil in a very sunny spot.

I second the Beth Chatto suggestion, it's also a good route to go down environmentally in terms of maintenance and watering etc.

Try Teucrium Fruticans (tree germander). It's an evergreen shrub (actually greyish leaves), likes heat, has really pretty light blue flowers and the bees adore it.

Lovely ideas, thank you.

If you find a patch of Mexican flebane (Erigeron karvensis) and like it grab a handful of seedheads (there will be billions) and scatter them around - they will either be ecstatic and flower and spread enthusiastically, or they will refuse to do anything and you will never see them again. Under no circumstances purchase one in a pot, you might as well just bury the money in the spot, it will die immediately. Ditto California poppies.

It does depend what;s under the gravel though - gravel on top and rich loam underneath are not great for Mediterranean style planting (speak from bitter experience)

Incidentally I have never found bindweed to be even slightly phased by gravel, it just grows straight through it.

Laughing at the Californian poppies - that was my mum's experience.
I'm considering nuclear weapons for the bindweed. Or a hex...