Has anyone found an Al Barari villa needs far more upkeep than a normal Dubai home?

You've spotted the real issue: in a lushly planted plot, water management is the whole game — irrigation, drainage and damp are one connected system, not three separate niggles.

What I'd put on a regular check in a home like yours:

• Irrigation: watch for drippers that clog and lines that weep underground — a slow buried leak near the villa keeps the soil (and adjacent walls) permanently damp. If your water bill creeps up with no indoor cause, suspect the irrigation before the plumbing.
• Drainage: heavy watering plus the occasional UAE downpour means the plot drainage and any channel drains near the villa have to actually move water away from the structure, not pool it against the walls.
• Water features: pumps, balancing and the pipework are ongoing — treat them like a small pool.

When to call someone: persistent damp on a ground-floor wall backing onto planting, or a garden that never quite dries, is worth investigating before it reaches the internal finishes. A maintenance team familiar with Al Barari's landscaped villas will look at the irrigation, drainage and any hidden leak together rather than fixing one and missing the cause. Would be good to hear how others handle the water-feature side specifically.

On the humidity: the AC angle matters here. In a high-humidity microclimate the indoor units are pulling far more water out of the air, so the condensate drains work overtime and clog faster — that musty patch you mentioned is often a backed-up drain, not the room itself. Keep those drains flushed. If certain rooms stay clammy, a dedicated dehumidifier in the worst one is cheaper and more effective than dropping the AC setpoint and running up the bill. Landscaped villas basically run a wetter internal climate than the rest of Dubai, and the AC has to be maintained accordingly.

Not Al Barari but a green compound in Abu Dhabi, and I recognise all of this. The thing that caught me out: mould behind furniture on the walls that face the garden, because the airflow there was poor and the humidity high. Pulling furniture a few centimetres off those walls and improving air circulation helped more than I expected. Curious whether Al Barari owners get this on north-facing planted walls too.