 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. Today we visit the Arboretum at Flagstaff. This public park covers 200 acres with plants unique to the Colorado Plateau environment. Here I got to explore the lovely shade garden with gardens manager Sarah Cassatt. Sarah, this shade garden is beautiful and a lot more lush looking than things out in the open. Yes, we can grow plants that need more water or a little more sensitive to the intense sunlight in here. What's this one? This is meadow root and this is the female plant. I see the pretty flowers here. Yes, and the male plant has a different growth habit and different flowers. A lot more frilly looking. Yes, amazingly enough. Ah yes, in the plant world things are different. Yes they are. I see a plant over here that's covering the ground very well. Let's take a look at that. All right. Well this really looks nice. This is ladies mantle. Looking awful good here in a very dry environment. This is a very hardy plant. It overwinter's here just fine and can deal with dry conditions. I saw you had alamium which is also a good ground cover for shade areas. Yes it is. Let's take a look at that one. The plant was some really pretty foliage and I see it's going to give us some pretty flowers as well. Yes it will. Interestingly, this is one of those plants that in other parts of the country can be problematic. In New England it tends to grow rather vigorously but here in our drier and colder climate it tends to behave itself a little better and stays in a smaller confined space. It's one of those plants that we can manage with water. If we water it a lot it's going to grow a lot. If we give it less water it's going to be more confined. Yes, exactly. Okay notice we've got a plant over here that can talk to us. Let's go over and see what it has to say. All right. It's called pig squeak. Well that's interesting. I think most of us know it as heartleaf bruginia. It's an interesting plant and you know it's growing very well here. It's actually from Siberia so it's very well adapted to the high elevations here and probably what makes that squeak is the waxy coating on the leaf which protects it from drying out. And the wax comes off of my finger so I can even make the squeak sound without the leaf now. There you go. I noticed over here another plant that has a perfect western name. Let's go see Miss Prunella. All right. The name Prunella makes me think of pioneers 100 years ago. This is a plant named Prunella. Yes. This is a very nice ground cover and again it's a nice hardy plant that overwinters here and can handle the drought conditions. It's the kind of plant we need here in the southwest and it's got the perfect southwestern name, Prunella. It's a very nice combination. Sarah, thank you so much for this tour of the Shade Garden. You're very welcome. Thank you.