I bought this plant last year and planted it in front of my house, in partial shade behind a patch of banana trees in my hot, dry California SF East Bay yard. Even though I planted it in early summer, it survived the dry season with minimal additional water, grew like a weed and now 15 months later it is about 7-8 feet tall and about 6 feet wide. I've only seen one other in my area (at the Merritt College landscape department) and I'm surprised they're not way more common. I've never seen them for sale in any of the local nurseries so I had to buy it online.
I never fertilize it, I water it maaaaybe once a month if I remember (and in our climate, there's zero rain from June to November so it wasn't getting anything I didn't give it). It always looks beautiful and is completely covered with little dark purple flowers every time I look at it. It probably wouldn't fare as well in our full hot summer sun, but I am always impressed by how nice it looks. It does a great job hiding an electrical panel on the wall behind it that's around head height. I've only needed to prune it a couple of times to keep a branch from growing out into the pathway.
It does drop a lot of tiny little flowers all over the place, but it's in a corner of my yard that I don't mind. If you put it near a patio or something, sweeping up the debris might get tiresome.