 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. You bought your new home here in the Southwest. Now you need a landscape. You can plant it yourself, but it might be a good idea to hire a landscape designer. But what do you do? What are the questions you ask? Dr. Ralston St. Hilaire teaches landscape design at New Mexico State University and he's gonna give us some pointers today. Ralston, thank you. Good morning, goodness. If you were the landscape designer designing this property, what are the things you would do first? Well, Curtis, one of the first things we want to do is take a side inventory. And that means that we look at our side, look at the potential problems and how we can potentially address those. Have you found any problems? Well, I was catching out a few ideas here and yes, I can point out a few of those for you, for example, Curtis. Right here on this side we could look at a potential erosion problem and that's one of the questions and concerns that a designer would possibly have to address. Well, Ralston, it's flat up here. Do we have any problems up here? Yes, Curtis, there are potential problems and one of the problems that we might want to address here would be the issue of privacy, for example. You've got a porch right here, right next to the house. Right next to the house and that's one of the issues that the landscape designer must address in his design. Is there anything else we need to consider here? One of the issues or features that we need to take into consideration would be the curve on this outside wall. This curve line dominates the landscape and therefore the designer must take into account that this is going to be part of his landscape and therefore he or she has to design for it. It doesn't look like a place for a formal landscape now. Certainly not, Curtis. Street lines certainly don't have a place in this design because of these curves and also we can notice curves in the garage way, the arch and even on part of the windows. And so therefore an informal design is probably the best way to go. Well, after the site survey, what's next? Curtis, I'll take you to my landscape design lab and show you what happens next. Let's go design. Sure. Do you still design on paper these days? No, Curtis. I actually use the computer. Well, this is a different landscape. What is it showing us? Yeah, this is a typical frontier design that shows some of the principles and elements involved in landscape design. Principles and elements? What does that mean? This is like making a cake. The principles would be the recipe and the elements would be the ingredients that are going to make in that cake. So what are the principles? Well, the principles involved in landscape design include repetition. For example, notice how this group of plants here, the dwarf broom, has been repeated throughout the landscape. We can also see the same thing happening with the gray Crippin gemander, which is also repeated throughout the landscape. The elements? The elements are actually what make up those principles. So in the case of the Crippin gemander, for example, we can look at the texture of the plant or the seasonal color, which would be another element of design. There's color and texture, but are there other elements we should be aware of? Yes, we should also be aware of things like line, for example, as we're going to see in this design. We could see this line in the landscape. Also, line may be brought about by having plant materials create that line for us as we can demonstrate in this design. So when we put these things together, we've made a landscape. Can you show us how the designer addressed the issues in this property? Yes, Curtis. One of the things we can immediately see is that the designer has used curved lines in the design. And that does two things. It accentuates the curved lines on the outside wall, as well it accentuates the curve on the sidewalk. Also notice that the designer has repeated some of the plant materials in the design. For example, those junipers are repeated throughout the landscape, which is a very good idea. Also notice that the designer has repeated some textures in the landscape by the use of those pines. You notice that they're all repeated in the design. So they've done a lot of good things here. Yes, they have, Curtis. I see a problem that's real common in landscapes, and they've used an interesting way to solve that problem. Let's go take a look at that. Utilities and utility easements often cause landscape problems. It looks like the designer has chosen an interesting way to deal with this problem here. Yes, Curtis. The designer has chosen evergreen plants to screen the utilities from the house. Notice that it also curves around and screens this from the view on the house. But also notice that the easement is kept clear, which is required by law, of course. That's an important thing. Well, Rauston, thank you for sharing your insight into the mind of a designer. Thank you, Curtis.