 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. San Antonio gardener Candice Harmon brings her art background to play in designing her garden. You know, in a lot of the countries when people think of fall color, they think of trees, but here in your garden you've got a lot of color, but it's not in trees. Is this your purpose? Yes, this is my purpose to have a lot of different colors in the front of the yard to be seen from the inside of the house and also driving by the development and also just a combination of different colors. It looks very artistic, like an artist painted it. That's my background. I grew up in an art family and I studied art. Look at these colors right here. That aster is spectacular. This is the automaster and it just actually is in full bloom right now along with the sentry plant which is the blue-green colors. Colors go good together. The combination and we also have the Mexican bush sage back here which is the different purple and the different shades of the pinks and the reds in the garden which is what I'm trying to do here in the front. It just looks like somebody painted it instead of grew it. That's beautiful right now. As I look at your garden, I see that you've got a lot of interesting plants here that really shows you know where you're gardening because you're at the northern limit for some of these plants, the southern limit for others, eastern for some, western for some. So you've chosen the plants which grow uniquely here. Moving to Texas, we like the palms, the agave, the cactus and also a lot of the flowering plants. And we just tried to combine them all together and they're growing very well here and we're very pleased with them. As I look over here though, I see it's totally different. Yes, that's the vegetable garden. Let's go over there. You've got a very interesting vegetable garden here. What is this vine? This is the Malabar spinach and of course in Texas it's very hot. This is spinach that grows all through the summer and into the fall. So this is a good one for any hot area if you want a spinach-like plant because it's really not a spinach. That's correct, yes. If you like hot, here's hot. Oh, we grow a lot of the jalapenos and the habaneros. Hotter the better. They're hot. And then we go up here, I see you've got tomatoes. Yes, this is our fall tomato crop that's grown right now. We have a lot of the celebrity and the bingo tomatoes. This is the wisteria arch that leads from one section of the garden to the other area. This is where the fruit trees. And we also have another section that I have is more of a private garden and they have the peach tree up there and a very quiet spot in the garden. A little wall of Texas sage around it. Correct, it's a Silverado sage. And then over here. And going through the arch into the vegetable garden. Oh, this hardscape is interesting. This is the banana tree. Ah, okay. The pink fruiting banana hasn't produced yet, but hoping. You're in that area where you might be able to grow that. And there's Texas in the hardscape. Yes, when we moved to Texas, that was one thing that we wanted to do is we moved here and we became Texans. So we put the Texas in the hardscape. And this hardscape serves a function too, doesn't it? Yes, it's actually two things. One is it gives us, allows us to have the raised beds for easier gardening with the bad soil that we have here. And also for drainage. We have a lot of water that comes off the hillside and this helps divert the water to the back of the area and gives it some drainage. So you had to import soil. Yes, we added the four way mix. And let me show you an area where we didn't add soil. Okay. This is my fanciful garden. I see you've got a mulch here, but you said you didn't import soil. That's correct. This is what the oak tree here is all roots. And so what I've done is actually tried a lot of different plants. Some of them didn't grow. I actually now have the Mexican petunias and also the fig ivy which self-propagate and continue to spread. Some interesting sculpture here. Yes, I love to do a few, I love to do the rocks and just all the animals and the bugs in here. And this is just kind of a fanciful area that I just tried different plants in and just come out here and work and put the hanging pots. I see you've got a drainage problem here when you get those very heavy but infrequent Texas rains. Yes, we do get a lot of rain up here in the hill country and we have done a lot of drainage areas here. Let me show you our drainage system we have out in front. So this isn't just a sidewalk, this is your drainage. That's right. This is all the water from the roof and the gutters coming off that flows into here. It takes the water down to the culvert at the end of the property plus also this is a walkway. Okay, and I see you've got flocks planted alongside it. Right. And when I'm in this part of the world, I expect to see Lantana. Yes, a lot of Lantana. A lot of color. And now we're back in the desert. This is where we have our aloe, our cactus and our agaves and we have a golden barrel cactus over here. This is my favorite, the one, the multi-barrel. It's not very common in the series. No, it's not. In fact, the barrel cactus is not very common at all. And something unusual, all of a sudden we're in the middle of some putting greens. Yes, actually a little break in the garden, some area to kind of settle the eye. Give some real good eye appeal from the road too. Right, it's a focal point. And as we walk a little further, we're going into a totally different area. The Portulac are blooming in such a way that it really, in this area, looks so natural. Right after the sand traps, we have the whole block, the bloom of color. Okay, and here they are just as colorful as can be, but they've been more colorful, haven't they? Yes, they have. They're actually just about dying out right now. Okay, so here in the water just continues on down into the natural drainages? That's correct, yes. Thank you for giving us a tour of your beautiful garden. I'm glad you could come. Thank you. 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.