I'm excited about my yard plans

I live on the edge of a small neighborhood which abuts thousands of acres of undeveloped land. Though my lot is small I plan on landscaping almost exclusively with native plants that are beneficial to wildlife, mostly birds. I am hoping to choose plants that will provide shelter and food year-round.
Using this website http://www.wildflower.org/collections/ and inputting just my state & soil conditions I was able to narrow my list of plants down to just 64. I hope to make my yard beautiful & eco-friendly.
Wish me luck!

I took a quick peek at that site for the basic listing of plants they were recommending for NM. I found that every single plant they suggested was listed at the USDA site as being native to NM. That's really remarkable. Good find.

editing to add-
did you know this site existed-
http://npsnm.unm.edu/
and that they have a whole bunch of different local chapters-
http://npsnm.unm.edu/chapters.html

This message was edited Feb 16, 2008 5:05 PM

Amazing isn't it? I was thrilled to find it.

Those are wonderful llinks! Thanks! I will probably get a membership.

I was just in NM for about a week. You really have a beautiful state. I had no idea it was so incredibly diverse even up in the northern reaches.

:-) I love it here. Where did you visit?

Way down south in Silver City to the Gila Cliff Dwellings and surrounding area but it literally rained the whole time we were there. Then up more toward Albuquerque and Santa Fe we tooled around Chaco Canyon in Negeezi, Pecos National Historical Park in Pecos, Bandelier National Monument in Los Alamos which was actually one of my favorite places to snow-shoe, Cimarron Canyon State Park in Eagle but it literally snowed the entire time we were there so we didn't get a chance to see a lot of wildlife (means we need to come back), and the Rio Grande Gorge area. I'm very impressed with what I got a chance to experience while visiting. So much so we're going to go back. In the past, we only went to NM to go skiing at Taos. Which reminds me, loves Taos Pueblo which we were encouraged to visit because of another member here. We did and are very happy she suggested we go. Not bad for a week, eh? I must admit we kept going until we dropped and that day that Taos got 2' of snow made getting back to our hotel rather interesting.

I used to live in Silver City and have visited the Cliff Dwellings. It was very different years ago. It has been closed temporarily due to the bridge washing out this winter. I've never been to the other places you've mentioned. Can you believe it? I've lived in New Mexico for 25 years! They are all on my list though.

Well, I learned to fear the word "wash" when I was in your state. You definitely don't want to try to cross any water even in a car to get across a wash area. We had to white knuckle it to get across a few "wash" areas to get back and it was not a pleasant experience and I can certainly see why vehicles end up flipped on their sides carried down a wash. A few more hours and that one wash would have been totally impassable. I have no idea what people do when they get stuck on the other side of a wash with only one road in and out. There'd been a lot of rain when we were there. Lots of areas were washed out and closed. It happens. We still got a chance to get into some really awesome natural areas.

How far of a drive are you from Bandelier National Monument? That's one hike that is quite long that you wouldn't want to miss if you like native plants. The scenery is beautiful and visiting those types of areas during the off-peek season leaves one with a sense of awe. Based on the trails when we went to the Tsankawi Ruins, we could tell it had only been traveled by us and a few rabbits. Although it snowed on and off that day, I did get a few photos that weren't blurred from snowflakes of the hike to the Tsankawi Ruins. Other than that, we ran out of time to get to the Valles Caldera which is not that far away from Bandelier. I'd really like to hike that someday just to see the vegetation growing in that area. Hmmm, maybe you can do it and take photos ;)

There were campers on the "wrong" side of the bridge when it washed away. I guess they got them out with helicopters.
I'm guessing I'm 4 or 5 hours from Bandelier and 'my list' has another addition. I have already asked for my birthday present (June). A trip here http://members.aol.com/borealowl/clanton.html
unique plant & bird species to be found

I'm pretty sure we were in the Coronado National Forest area of AZ but not in the Clanton Canyon area of the Coronado National Forest in NM. I'd have to look at a map to figure it out for sure. We covered so much ground and literally kept going like we had everready batteries in us. We liked AZ very much too.