 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. We're back again at the stunning Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. Today, I'm taking a special tour of the park's inspiration gardens. Let's go take a look. Andrea, this mountain laurel is something a lot of gardeners in the Southwest like to grow or want to grow, but they really can't do it in the colder climates, can they? Right, yeah. It's really something that really grows here in central Texas and further on south. It's one that people really love to have in their garden. It's an evergreen, large shrub to small tree, but what's really great about it is in the springtime we get these beautiful clusters of purple flowers. They look similar to wisteria, but it's really on a tree, it's not a vine. And they're extremely fragrant. If you could smell this on TV, you could smell great bubblegum all over and it's really quite a treat. And this is really a woodland part of the garden here. Yeah, this corner here is a woodland plant community and you would find mountain laurels in central Texas growing mixed with live oaks and different things on dry, rocky slopes. Some of the other woodland species are planted in here with it, so you can get kind of a feeling. If you have shade in your garden, different things that you could plant. Grasses, they don't like shade, but the sunny spot in the shaded garden. Yeah, if you have an open sunny spot, something like this big mealy on the edge of a woodland would be really just fine. But it does need more full sun. Some of the other shade plants that we have, as you mentioned, the spiderwort is really good for shady situations. Their need, because they bloom beautiful purple flowers in the springtime. They go totally dormant in the summertime. On the Edwards Plateau, you get more precipitation than a lot of other parts in Southwest. You get some wet areas, don't you? Yeah, we do. The limestone doesn't really soak in a lot of water, so we have some streams and here are some different plants that will grow along stream sides. What's also nice about the stock tank is for those people who do live on limestone that's very hard to dig into, if they want a pond, they can still do something by just putting a stock tank right on top of the limestone. That's really clever. Now, what do we have over here? Well, this is the opposite from water we've moved to a dry, rocky hillside. And these plants that are growing in this garden are things that you would find growing together in a dry, rocky environment. If you have any kind of soil at all, these are the kinds of plants that you could grow in the Texas Hill Country. So this is a Texas version of an English rock garden. Exactly. There's some grasses here. Yeah, here we have what most people might think of as a typical wildflower meadow. We have a combination of flowers and grasses mixed in along with it. And this is all part of this garden, which is more how to use native plants in a more naturalistic sort of design. If you'd like to see a more formal design using native plants, Jill Nooks's Garden is our newest and you might go look at that. That sounds really good. Thanks, Andrea. Thank you. Jill, I understand you designed this formal garden here. What was your purpose? Well, we worked with the staff to provide different models for the use of native plants in a varying style. So, for example, if somebody likes a formal style, wants a more controlled, organized landscape, native plants are still an appropriate use for that kind of expression in a garden. So in here, we're using symmetry, we're using hardscape, and the plants all together to have a very kind of structured look. Okay, what are the important elements that you've got here? Well, we have first a hardscape. We used rustic materials for the pathway in a patio, and eventually we're going to have benches. But they're constructed in a very artistic and refined way. There is no mortar joints, they're put very tightly together. So it's almost like an artwork right there. Also, we use these plants that we call architectural plants like this sapote or this Mexican persimmon that has a very interesting shape and form to it that we can control with clipping and pruning, but it keeps that structure all year round. Also, you'll notice these very common plants like these eastern red cedars, but this is from a population a little east of Austin that has a very columnar shape. So in this case, we use them and say a substitution for the Italian cypress, which doesn't really thrive here as well as our native cedars. The last thing is we're using a substitute for a turf area as this native Texas cedars. Now, as you can tell, this is a very new garden, so it's really sparse right now at the first month that it's been installed, but eventually these cedars will merge and we'll have little native bulbs coming in between them. This is an area that will be green all year round, drought tolerant, but doesn't need to be mowed or manicured in that way. So it'll be a nice contrast with the perennial border around the edges. I think this is really novel. A lot of people don't realize you can use native plants in a very formal manner. I'm going in that direction. Thank you, Jill. You're welcome.