@jani if you know of a source for another three year old plant, I’d be very interested to know 🙂 I’ve once bought a small seedling, but as it turns out, it’s mislabeled. This year, for the first time after many years of searching, I was able to buy some seeds, only a few, but hopefully they’ll germinate and grow. Everybody I’ve spoken to that has grown this species has had trouble growing it and most (if not all) have lost it. Good drainage seems to be essential indeed and, from my experience with another Mediterranean species P. mascula ssp hellenica I would agree that it’s best not to water it in late Summer after the foliage has died off. If it’s anything like hellenica, then my experience was that wet soil at the end of Summer (after foliage had dried), was able to kill the ‘crown’ of the root system and hence those plants were gone…