Common name:Creeping Mahonia
Botanical name:Mahonia repens

The creeping Mahonia is a low-growing shrub with a creeping habit, making it well suited as an understory groundcover. It grows about 12 to 15 inches tall and spreads 3 to 4 feet, though, due to its stoloniferous ways, will slowly spread wider. It has spiny, holly-like foliage that emerges red and matures to a dull green; though evergreen, leaves take on a bronzy-purple fall hue. Yellow, fragrant flowers bloom April and May, and are followed by berries that ripen purple in the fall and persist all winter. Exceptional four-season beauty. There are some planted at the Greater Avenues Water Conservation Garden.

Common name:Blue Fescue
Botanical name:Festuca ovina glauca

This group of ornamental grasses generally grow less than a foot tall and have fine, green to blue-green, evergreen leaves that are very thin and hair-like. Flowers appear in the summer and have an airy and open appearance. Prefers full sun but will tolerate afternoon shade if not over-watered. It needs well draining soil and is drought tolerant once it's established. An evergreen, it may need tidying up in the spring; trim out dead foliage and seed heads.

Common name:Bull Grass
Botanical name:Muhlenbergia emersleyi

This Muhlenbergia is a cool season, clumping grass with blue-green, course foliage. It grows about 2 to 3 feet tall and wide. Its plume emerges late summer and is purple, though it turns a silvery white as the season progresses. The whole plant turns tan with the first hard frost. A southwest native, it is very heat and drought tolerant once established.

Common name:Desert Willow; Desert Catalpa
Botanical name:Chilopsis linearis

Desert Willow is a small, deciduous tree with shrubby inclinations. It grows about 15 to 25 feet tall and nearly as wide, with an open, though twiggy appearance. New bark is green, becoming brown and shaggy as it ages. Leaves are fine-textured, long and narrow, and willow-like. Remarkable, orchid-like flowers of white and pink appear in late spring and continue, to a lesser extent, all summer. It can be pruned as a multi-stemmed, low canopied tree or left more shrubby. There is a specimen at the Greater Avenues Water Conservation Demonstration Garden.