 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. Cheryl Sewell's Dallas Garden is a zero-escape on the eastern edge of the Southwest. Cheryl, this landscape is really unique in your neighborhood. You still got lawn like everyone else, but this is different. You're trying to do something here. Well, it all started out, we had too much grass and we were tired of mowing and we had this light pole here on the corner. We were trying to camouflage that. We started with a small bed here on the corner and when Bermuda grass won't grow, you know you need to get some hardy plants. So we started out with a few cactus. We had a friend give us some from New Mexico. The hedgehog cactus. And we've had real good luck with the ice plant. And Sculpt Cap is a great little plant, too. That's beautiful. It stays evergreen and blooms pretty much all summer. Another plant we have is the gray Creeping Jermander. It's a very zero-escape plant. As a matter of fact, if you overwater it'll die. So water is zero beside there. It blooms pretty much all summer. It's very fragrant. The bees love it. It's just a real nice little ground cover. They also have Texas tuberose. I thought I saw that. Manfreda, that's one of my favorites. It looks a little sparse right now because it's new and a lot of people think a zero-escape is a really slow landscape. Well, not necessarily Curtis. For example, this plant right here, this is a cardoon. This was planted about six weeks ago. It was a one-gallon container. And it's grown quite a lot just in the six weeks. But I have another one back here. I planted the same size last year. And it's quite large now. This cardoon did get big. Yeah, it's sitting up its bloom spikes now. So it's much taller than it normally is. But you can see what it does in just one year. And it's probably going to have 15 or 20 blooms on it. It looks like an artichoke doesn't it? Yeah, it does. But it opens out and it looks more like a thistle bloom. It's a vivid blue. It's very striking. It's not a real long-lived plant, but it's well worth it to get several years of enjoyment out of it. You've got other plants which may be long-lived. I've looked at a lot of different sedums here. Oh, yeah. Yellow flowers, white flowers. I've got probably seven or eight different varieties of sedums. And this one a friend of mine gave me a start from his grandmother's yard and see what it's done. Good ground cover fills in. You've got a lot of other things. Skull caps here again. Skull caps. That's a beautiful plant. It's just... Looks like it's well-behaved, too. Very well-behaved. And we've got a few little annual cosmos here. They recede themselves. Have some yuccas. The yucca rostrata over here is a great plant. Very low maintenance. We have a little lizard right here on the red yucca. It takes his nap. He likes to live in there. Uh-huh. Also, this is a Nalina. That's beautiful. Nalina Nelsoni. And again, that's been a very fast-growing plant. I put that in maybe five years ago, three or five years ago in a five-gallon bucket. And it has, you know, increased tenfold probably. So everyone thinks that zeroescape is slow. It is not. No, it's not. If you choose the right plant. That's correct, Curtis. I look on through here. I see a lot of things. Some I don't really recognize very well. What's this ground cover back here? That's lichness. And it's self-seeds. And it's a biennial. And it comes up and does this. It has sort of a gray, fuzzy leaf ground cover. And then it sends up a bloom spike this time of year. And I have two colors. One is sort of a real hot pink, and the other one is white. That's beautiful right now. But add flowers? This may be a perfect plant. And the daylil is, of course. What is this? This is another Texas native. It's a four-nerve daisy. And this is another tremendous plant. It blooms probably ten months out of the year. And it is ever-grant. It's a little thread-like foliage. This is a cool-season Texas native, Barber's Buttons. And it's at the end of its bloom cycle. It's lost its petals. But you can see the seed pods are still quite interesting. And is that Texas betony back there? No, it looks like Texas betony, but it's actually cedar sage. And it has a similar bloom, bright red. But it blooms this time of year. It's a more cool season, whereas a Texas betony would be a warm season. So you've got something to... It looks the same, so you can really spread the season out. That's right. And it looks like you've moved your living room outside here. Well, yeah, essentially, we spent a lot of time out here. And we started out, we were having a problem growing ground cover underneath this yelp on tree because the root sucker is so bad and we get tired of constantly cutting those out. So we put in a flagstone patio and a seeding area, and we spend quite a little bit of time out here relaxing. And that was phase one. And then phase two, we put in the water feature. Have you seen Curtis? Okay. Wow. The water feature looks nice. It sounds good. Very restful. Very relaxing. And actually, that was a recycled project. We read at a bathroom and had a spare bathtub. That's a bathtub. Yeah. That's a sunken bathtub. And over here, it looks like you've moved the dining room outside. Yeah. And we've got that great live oak tree. And we eat breakfast out there frequently. Really? Mm-hmm. You and Roger have created a really fabulous living area, a garden here. Thanks for showing it to us. Well, thank you, Curtis. I enjoyed having 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.