If all you want is to plot x-y-z axis passing through origin, then you can do the following. (assuming that origin is somewhere inside the plot; otherwise set the xlim, ylim, zlim first).
x=(-2:.1:1);
y = (-1:.1:2);
z = peaks(x, y');
mesh(x,y,z);
hold on
xlabel('x'); ylabel('y'); zlabel('z');
h = gca;
plot3(h.XLim, [0 0], [0 0], 'r')
plot3([0, 0], h.YLim, [0 0], 'r');
plot3([0, 0], [0 0], h.ZLim, 'r');
view(60, 10)
