OK, the Water District ads are starting to make you feel guilty about that big patch of water-sucking fescue outside your window. But still you resist, thinking you'll miss the lushness if you xeriscape.

Not so, says Mark Hoversten, coordinator of UNLV's landscape architecture program. The transplant from Minnesota hasn't tried to re-create the woodsy gardens of the Upper Midwest. A home in the Mojave Desert, he says, should look like it belongs here. But that doesn't mean lava rock and cactus. His own garden – a work always in progress, he admits ¡V is filled with native desert plants.

Among Hoversten's favorite native plants are:

Trees

Desert willow
Pinon pine
Screwbean mesquite
Sweet acacia
Blue palo verde
Redbud

Shrubs & Groundcovers

Desert Marigold
Cliff rose
Fremont dalea
Mormon tea
Creosote
Globe mallow
Goodding's verbena
Hummingbird trumpet bush

Accents

Ocotillo
Teddybear cholla
Utah agave
Joshua tree
Mojave yucca
Banana yucca