By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

A pretty suggestion from Norm Schilling of Schilling Horticulture Group of Las Vegas, Nevada:  plant tough, little Leucophyllum zygophyllum 'Cimarron' directly under your window.  (It's the foliage plant on the left shown below.) It is naturally compact and will stay the size you want it (about 3' by 3') with minimal pruning.  It can also take anything the desert dishes out -- heat, wind, minimial rainfall, alkaline soil.  All it asks in return is very good drainage. You won't see the well-behaved Leucophyllum from indoors because it stays neatly below the window.  But when outside, you can't help but admire its pretty, upward cupping leaves.  (Their shape gives the plant its common name, cup-leafed sage.)

Then, on either side, plant a Hesperaloe parvifolia (the plant on the right), suggests Schilling.  The five-feet flower stalks of the red yucca will lean in towards the window.  "So when hummingbirds come in to feed off the flowers, they're right in the middle of the glass--just where you'd want them to be," says Schilling.  A pretty idea all the way around.

Hesperaloe parvifolia photo courtesy of San Marcos Growers Nursery