 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. Carol Stutters, Phoenix Garden includes plants from other countries along with Southwestern natives. Hi Carol. Hi Curtis. I know I'm in a desert here. This garden though is a living desert. Were these plants all here when you came? No. This garden did not look like this at all two and a half years ago. For instance in the front here, beside these pillars, we had two L shaped concrete planters which as far as I'm concerned are just ovens for plants. So in the form my husband and I smashed them to pieces, took out the soil and we had somebody build us this very nice wall which is an anomaly really because you would think a wall would make a garden look smaller but in actual fact it's done the complete opposite. It makes the whole garden look bigger in the front and defines the space. It's very expansive looking and the plants, they're growing so well. Do you have to irrigate? A lot of the plants are on irrigation, the plants that were put in here by the builder that built the home but many of the plants are native plants and they have seeded themselves and my philosophy is if it seeds itself, if it's growing in the desert soil without any irrigation and I quite like it then I will let it grow. So I call them my volunteers. In the back garden, is it like this? No the back garden is very different, two and a half years ago when we moved here there was absolutely nothing. It just looked like a barren wasteland and as you'll see it looks rather different now. I understand you've brought a little bit of your past gardening experiences here. Yes I have, I brought my little bit of England. Well that'd be nice to see. Okay and this is my little bit of England Curtis. That's very pretty. This is something that you would find in England? Yes the roses, the daylilies, the iris, the sweet williams, they're all reminiscent of my English heritage and then I brought the sundial with me and that gives it this European feeling here. This is a small garden but it really does have that feel. Yeah it does. I see another, it looks like a tropical vine here. This is a snail vine which is an anomaly really because it isn't a snail like in its growth, it grows about one to two foot a week and I just keep it pruned back in the winter to allow the sun to go in and in the summer I let it drop down and it shades my bedroom and helps with our air conditioning bills. So that's a good thing to do. So understand you're growing in Arizona so you need shade. Oh absolutely. I see we've got a nice pathway here, very pleasant looking. Yes it's a nice meandering path that takes you around the roses. I see many many beautiful plants in other parts of the garden. Do you have other plants from other areas? Yes I do. I see many plants from Australia because they are quite drought tolerant and they do well. Let's go see those. Okay. This is a kangaroo paw that is an Australian plant and unfortunately it's not flowering very much at the minute. It's just starting to come away but when it flowers the full flower is much larger than you see at the moment and it looks like a kangaroo's paw, it's fuzzy. This tree I wanted to put a tree here that would look like a desert tree so it blended with my view across into the desert but I didn't want to put another paloverdi in here. So this is a eucalyptus spatulata and it's very desert like, it has the small leaves which indicates that it's not as water guzzling as some of the other eucalyptus and it has a really pretty bark. It doesn't have any flowers but I think it makes up for it in its general pleasing appearance. It has very feathery, open, very light appearance. It does. Very nice and I love the way it grows and the light filtering through gives a very good feeling. This is an emu bush. Its Latin name is aromophila. It comes in many, many different colours. Pinks, purples, lavenders, oranges, reds. Very drought tolerant, takes full sun. Flowers at different times of the year. I just love it. I have quite a lot of different ones in my yard. This is a pink one. I have another one that's orangey pink and then the lavender one hasn't flowered yet. And I just love it. I think it's a great, great shrub to have and I wish more people used them. Again, this is also from Australia. And this is another eucalyptus. I love the colour of the leaves of this and the shapes of the leaves. It's fairly drought tolerant, not as drought tolerant as the other one and it does need some shade from the afternoon sun. But I like this very much and I like the contrast against the other plants around it. And I like to use the leaves, the stems for flower-ranging. The preceding was a production of New Mexico State University. The views and opinions in this program are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the NMSU Board of Regents.