 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. High on a campus hill at the University of Texas El Paso is the fabulous Chihuahuan Desert Gardens. By rowing the paths here, you can see over 400 plant species of the Chihuahuan Desert, the largest collection of its type anywhere. And this represents 10% of the Chihuahuan Desert plants. I began my tour at the cool contemplative garden where I met botanic curator, Win Anderson. Win, this is really beautiful here. It looks like a real peaceful area. Well, Curtis, I can't tell you how nice it is to have you all here at the Chihuahuan Desert Gardens. This is our contemplative garden, a little oasis zone and a good zero escape. And I want you to note the water feature. It's not wasting water, it's a very slow drip. And this does a lot to add humidity in this small and confined area. But water features do have an important place in a good landscape in the Southwest. If you'll take special care to cut down on evaporation, like the shade structure, and just as important is this wind-buffering wall. It keeps the wind off it so you don't have evaporation and it holds humidity around the plants. And you get the sound, and I think you get a little bit better sound with the wall. In this circular area, you get really good sound resonance. It's very interesting, you get to hear the splash of the water, it makes you feel good. There's a little humidity in the air, but you're not wasting a lot of water. So let's go take a look at the habitat gardens, the sand garden, the aroya garden and the grass garden. Okay, sounds good. Let's go. Well, Wynn, this is nice. What habitat is this? This is the aroya garden, and this is a really neat plant. You may recognize it. This is Yuli, one of the Partheniums. Historically interesting from World War II, looking for a rubber supply. It was grown as a potential substitute for imported rubber during World War II, and occasionally you still find somebody experimenting with it. They do so at the A&M Research Center here in West Texas, as a matter of fact. It's a good plant for our landscapes. It's an excellent plant. For the low desert area. Very drought tolerant. That's correct. It's not all that coal-hardy. When I see another plant here with blue leaves that looks good with the Yuli and this oak, it looks like it does well here. That's the Mexican blue oak. I see it making acorns, so it's happy here. Yes, it's a happy camper. So this is another good plant for the aroya or mountainside gardens. Well, it's a small oak, which is nice and actually very fast growing. Most people think that opes are too slow for their landscapes. This one's only three years old in terms of being in the ground. It's looking pretty good. You have other habitats here too. Yes, let's go take a look. Okay. Well, Wynn, what do we have here now? Well, this is the grass garden. We've got nine different species of grass in here, including this alkali-sacotone. Beautiful feathery-looking grass, good landscape grass. You might recognize the blue grammar. We've got giant sacotone. A lot of things in here. And this is a different growing area. So someone who lives on the mountainside may have difficulty growing this. Some of these grasses, yes, would not be appropriate for the mountainside, although we do have Muhlenbergia portarai, which is really good for the mountainside. Bushmule is the common name because it is often found underneath shrubs in the desert. There's a good reason for that. That's right. It's so palatable. As a forage grass, the cattle and horses will eat it down to nothing. But out in areas where grazing no longer takes place, it'll cover the ground. It's a wonderful, soft, feathery grass. Now, this has been then the grass area, the habitat that would be sandy areas? Yeah, well, let's go take a look at the sand garden right here. Okay, so this is the real sand. This is the sand garden here. These would be the plants that you would find in the sand dune areas on both sides of El Paso and actually all the way up to Albuquerque. Sandy areas, but they're not going to do well in a heavy soil. Nope, you've got to have very well draining soil for this and for this plant right here. The famous purple sage of songs. And it gets these beautiful purple flowers this time of the year if our monsoon rains are good. And otherwise, it just looks like a bunch of nice green, tidy sticks. Kind of a silky green, though, even pretty when it's not flowering. But the important thing is it really loves sandy soil and a lot of people fight sandy soils in their garden when they could be using these plants. Use the ones that are adapted and beekeepers like this, too. Oh, excellent bee plants. Just be aware of plants, what they like. Here, we've looked at habitats. Things should be planted where they should be. We saw an arroyo habitat. We saw the grassland area. We see the sand. If people will plant those, appropriate plants in those areas, they'll do a lot better. It's a matter of looking at the plants that grow in the area you want to garden in and repeating those plants in your garden.