In this episode of Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw discusses some of the issues you may be experiencing with your hydrangeas this month and what you can do about them.

Topics covered in this week's episode:

Hydrangeas not blooming

• Know what variety is especially important with this issue.
• In Joanne's experience, if you have a nice large green bush but no or few flowers then you have a Macrophylla variety
  • They bloom on old wood that is unfortunately susceptible to late spring frost damage.
  • The buds form on the old wood in early spring and then a late frost comes and kills the bud.
  • The plant still grows nice and lush, and you don't know anything is wrong until it doesn't flower.
  • Extra water and fertilizer provide a nice full-leaved plant but no blooms
  • I have tried all the techniques to try and prevent this and protect the plant, but I gave up and replaced it with a hardier variety.
• If you are in an area where you often get a late frost after a nice warm-up, then consider swapping to another variety
• Hydrangeas discussed:
  • Macrophylla
  • Paniculata
  • Quercifolia
  • Serrata
  • Arborescence
• Which hydrangeas grow on old or new wood

Hydrangeas getting too large/floppy

• The preferred pruning practices to mitigate that
• Smaller variety recommendations of each type to have a hydrangea that stays smaller:
  • Munchkin Oakleaf Hydrangea
  • Invincibelle Wee White Hydrangea
  • Invincibelle Limetta
  • Little Lime or Bobo Hydrangeas
  • All are a great way to have more hydrangeas in a smaller space

Tips To Extend The Blooming Season Of Your Endless Summer Hydrangea

Hydrangeas

Hydrangeas Part One

Hydrangeas Part Two

BLOG POST -- Hydrangeas: When They Don't Work And What You Can Do About It

Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden

Please let me know what other topics you would like me to discuss.

Email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with me on my website: down2earth.ca

Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast.

On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. 

In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon.

Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.

In this encore presentation of Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing answer listener questions about the seasonal stressors we're experiencing in our gardens this month.

Here are some of the questions and topics covered in this episode:

• Is it one or two inches of water every week for our lawns?
  • What about in this drought here in the GTA? More water?
• Reminder to water newly planted trees.
• Using water timers on hoses to help with watering.
• Any tips for choosing an apple tree for my yard?
• How do we apply nematodes?
  • When's the best time?
• Watering for a week at night for nematodes: won't that do the damage you talk about for our lawn?
• Is fall a good time to plant?
• Growing an aloe plant

Suzanne Poizner's Urban Forestry Show on RealityRadio101.com.

Applying Nematodes

Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast.

You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne and Matthew via their websites:

Joanne Shaw: down2earth.ca

Matthew Dressing: naturalaffinity.ca

On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. 

In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide.

Get your copy today on Amazon.

Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.

This week on Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw welcomes author Alan Heeks to the podcast to discuss his self-help book, Natural Happiness: Use Organic Gardening Skills to Cultivate Yourself. 

About Alan Heeks

Alan Heeks is an inspiring guide to helping people cultivate their well-being through parallels with Nature. After a Harvard MBA and a successful career managing building materials businesses, Alan has spent 30 years creating nature-based learning venues, and leading groups there. In 1990, he started Magdalen Environmental Trust, converting 130 acres to a mixed organic farm. Since 1992 he has created Hazel Hill Wood as a 70-acre conservation wood and retreat centre. Alan has led many workshops with his Seven Seeds of Natural Happiness approach, including individuals, community groups, and NHS doctors. 

Here are some of the topics covered in this episode:

• Natural Happiness can help you dig deep and stay cheerful in these stormy times.
  • It shows how you can use gardening methods such as composting, mulching, and crop rotation to cultivate human nature, too.
  • A gardener applies skills like observation, patience and creativity, and you can adapt them to deal with daily stresses and big issues such as climate change.
  • Alan's approach is positive and practical, easy to use for gardeners and others.
• On the podcast and on YouTube, they talked about the interesting and practical exercises sprinkled throughout the book
• The Nourish Your Roots exercise suggests trying Tree Talk.
  • Imagine yourself as a tree and consider whether all parts of you are in balance.
  • The roots, the trunk and your branches. It is a practical and helpful exercise, especially when it encourages us to do some pruning!
• Another self-help "quickie" we discussed was how we handle compaction in our lives.
  • Alan related it to the soil in a garden, which for gardeners is a very clear analogy.
  • If our soil has good structure and is permeable then the air, heat, water, and nutrients can get in.
• The opposite is compaction.
  • Many of us know how to handle compaction in the garden more than we know how to handle it in our lives. This book is full of these practical and thought-provoking exercises.
• With such chapters as "Use Natural Energy Sources," "Compost Your Troubles," "Cultivating Community" and "Growing Through Climate Change," you are in for a wonderful helpful book even if you are not a gardener.
• This book also inspires the child in all of us who remember drawing trees, climbing trees and playing outside.
• Whatever you might have going on in your life, Natural Happiness: Use Organic Gardening Skiles to Cultivate Yourself would be a wonderful addition to your bookshelf.

Where you can find Alan Heeks:

• Website: www.naturalhappiness.net
• Buy his book here.
• Sign up for Alan's free newsletter here.

Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca

On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designer Joanne Shaw wraps up "critter month" with the ultimate critter we would all love to have: chickens. Joanne welcomes Homestead Phil, the co-founder of Rent the Chicken.

About Rent the Chicken 

Homestead Jenn and Phil are the co-founders of Rent the Chicken. It started as a way to earn supplemental income and is now full-time employment for both stretching across the United States and Canada. They feel blessed to be connected with many hard-working individuals that make Rent the Chicken successful. On their homestead, they raise chickens, meat rabbits, and ducks. Seeing the smiles on their renter's faces is what they look forward to when making deliveries for Rent the Chicken and Hatch The Chicken.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• How did you come up with the idea for Rent the Chicken?
  • Many people thought about having chickens in their garden and the benefits they bring, but what does it take to raise chickens from an egg or a peep?
• Tell us how Rent the Chicken works?
  • How much food do you need each day to feed the chickens?
• How old does the chicken need to be before it starts to lay eggs? 
• What are some of the regulations around renting a chicken in the States? What about in Canada?
• Where would you recommend someone go to find out the regulations in their area?
• If there is a problem with the chicken, how easy is it to get a hold of Rent the Chicken for help?
• What happens if a predator or a disease causes the chicken to pass while in a renter's care?
• Phil told us all about the other program offerings like Hatch the Chicken, Coops for Troops and the Give a Chicken program.

You can find Rent the Chicken online here, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing continue their "critter month" with a look into the soil and its diverse life. In this episode, they welcome Root Rescue's Bob Reeves to talk about how you can put little critters to use in your garden.

About Bob Reeves 

Bob has come to believe that the secret to plant success is hiding in the soil beneath our feet. He began the Soil Health/Root Rescue project in 2005 with a discovery made at Reeves Florist & Nursery, his family's garden centre in Woodbridge, Ontario. Bob is the founder and CEO of Root Rescue Environmental Products. He also serves as a Soil Microbiome Advisor to Flash Forest, a leading innovator in drone-powered reforestation.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• How did Root Rescue get started?
• What is Root Rescue?
• What are mycorrhizae fungi and how do they work? Compared to fertilizer?
• Why are urban soils dead soils?
• Is there any harm to people or pets?
• How is Root Rescue different from other mycorrhizae products on the market?
• What can't I use Root Rescue on?
• How often should I apply Root Rescue?

You can find Root Rescue online here, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing gear up for spring by taking a look at some garden products that will help you enjoy your garden to the fullest. In this episode, they welcome David Smorenburg from Upper Canada Organic Products to discuss their line of pest control products.

About David Smorenburg and Upper Canada Organic Products

David is the founder and president of Upper Canada Organic Products, Inc. Upper Canada Organic Products (U C Organic Products) has been a family-run business since 2002. They register, develop, and distribute the least-toxic pest control products in Canada and are a pioneer in bringing plant-based pest control products to Canada.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• We first learned about you from a previous guest, Guy Ruccolo from Blue Star Nursery. He recommended your products, saying that he couldn't keep them on the shelves.
• Tell us about Upper Canada Organic Products.
• U C Organic was instrumental in assisting the change to the Pest Control Products Act that made it easier for people or companies to bring low-toxic pest products to market in the future.
• Garlic juice and orange peel extract are two of the food-based items now available to Canadians for use to assist in controlling pests.
• What are the names of your popular products?
• How does your mosquito repellent work?
• How does the Orange Guard work?
• What other products do you have available?

You can find Upper Canada Organic Products online here, as well as on Facebook.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this episode of Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing continue March's edible gardening theme with a look into the ways we can make our vegetable gardens more beautiful with ideas on how to incorporate vegetables with our ornamental gardens.

Some of the topics covered:

• The "traditional rectangular or square vegetable garden" and how not everyone has that space; for those who do, the garden tends to only be attractive at certain times of the year.
  • • Make it more attractive by setting it in the lawn or using raised garden bed products for use on a patio or in a smaller space.
• Pay extra attention to raised beds with soil and water; they can be a great solution for beginners with less space.
• Learn about some vegetable beds that can be planted in the front yard.
  • Consider interesting shapes like a parterre
  • Or vegetables can be planted in between shrubs and perennials
• Use structures like obelisks or arbours to make use of vertical space while creating visual design features in the front or back.
• Fences can also be used by using chains for the plants to grow up or wall pockets to create a green wall on the fence, especially with herbs or lettuce.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

About Emma Biggs

Emma is a 16-year-old gardener, author, speaker, and blogger. Her passion is growing tomatoes, trying new, unusual crops, and saving seeds. She has raised over 150 tomato varieties in her Toronto garden and loves to try weird and wonderful plant projects. Emma gives talks at libraries, seed exchanges, garden clubs, and garden events.  She is the co-host of The Food Garden Life Show, and her latest book is Gardening with Emma. 

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• What are your top tips for starting tomatoes from seed?
• Do you have a favourite type of tomato to grow?
  • How do you grow them, in beds or containers?
• We know you grow a lot of varieties: How do you harden them all off to get them outside?
• How do you handle pests and diseases?
• What's your actual favourite tomato variety that everyone should grow?
• What do you do with all those tomatoes?
• Is there anything else that you like to grow?

You can find Emma online here, as well as on Instagram.

You can order her book Gardening with Emma here.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing begin their month-long look at edible gardening. In this episode, all-star guest Julia Dimakos returns to the podcast to discuss growing herbs and her new e-book How to Plan a Vegetable Garden, available now at www.juliadimakos.com

About Julia Dimakos

Julia gardens in 7000 square feet in Mono, Ontario, continuing in the formal kitchen garden style. She has been growing vegetables and writing about gardening for over 10 years and has been published in Canadian Organic Grower magazine twice.

She loves to inspire others to have their own vegetable gardens by showing them the simpler side of gardening. She enjoys teaching others, speaking, and holding workshops. You can read her blog at www.juliadimakos.com.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• What are the best conditions to grow herbs inside?
• What herbs are easiest to grow?
  • Easiest to grow: Dill, cilantro, basil, thyme, ginger (from store-bought rhizome), sweet marjoram
• Is it hard to start herbs from seed?
  • Harder to grow from seed: parsley, sage, oregano, lavender, savory (summer or winter), lemongrass
• Is it better to buy herbs for indoors vs. starting from seeds?
  • Better to purchase as a plant: rosemary, mint, lovage
• What conditions do we need to have to grow herbs outside?
• Is there a special fertilizer required for herbs?
• Should we use organic fertilizer when feeding herbs and other edibles?
• What are some of the common pests and diseases herbs are susceptible to?

You can find Julia online here, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.

You can also listen to past Down the Garden Path podcasts featuring Julia:

Growing Under Lights

Digging Deep with Veggies

Growing Indoors

Autumn Edibles

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This week on the Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing wrap up February's houseplant theme with an "Ask Us Anything!" episode.

Some of the questions listeners asked:

• Does rock salt for ice hurt lawns?
• Are your past shows posted anywhere?
• After that beautiful flower blooms and dies off, what do I need to do to the plant?
• I already see that the home improvement stores have their spring fertilizer out. As soon as the snow melts, what is the earliest time to put this down on our lawns?
• When's your book coming out?
• I want to plant a red maple in my yard this year. I live just outside of Toronto. What is the earliest that I can do so?
• My kids saw a seed package of giant pumpkins at the store the other day, and they want to grow them for this coming year's Halloween. Any tips or advice on how to do this properly? How soon can we put the seed in the ground? Do you need a lot of room? What about fertilizer?
• You had a gentleman on your show a while back talk about garden ponds. Can you please tell me his name or company?

Resources mentioned during the show:

• Where can we find past episodes?
• Air Plants with David Lin
• Tropical Plants and How to Love Them with Marianne Willburn
• Julia Dimakos's past two episodes: Growing Under Lights and Autumn Edibles
• Ernest Williams from Aquascape Inc. and his past shows: Water Garden Trends and Water Features for the Garden with Aquascape

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This week on the Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing speak with author Marianne Willburn about her new book Tropical Plants and How to Love Them.

About Marianne Willburn

Marianne Willburn is a gardening columnist, speaker and author of Big Dreams, Small Garden, and one of the six-person writing team at GardenRant. A regular contributor to Better Homes and Gardens, The American Gardener, and other national gardening magazines, Marianne has also been a weekly newspaper columnist for over a decade and is the recipient of several Gold and Silver Media Awards from Garden Communicators International (formerly GWA).

She believes strongly that you should never wait for the 'perfect space' to create a restful garden oasis for yourself and your family; and she has spent much of her gardening life in small city and suburban gardens in places as diverse as California, England and the Mid-Atlantic. In 2013, she began gardening intensively and exhaustively on ten acres in a rural corner of Northern Virginia and shares her gardening life each week on her blog, smalltowngardener.com.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• How do you define a tropical plant?
• Why should we grow them?
• Summer romances
• Frugal gardens
• Bringing houseplants inside

You can find Marianne online here, as well as on Facebook and Instagram.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

It's all about houseplants this month on Down the Garden Path podcast. In this episode, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing speak with Kevin Tholenaars about his online houseplant business, www.plantsome.ca.

About Kevin Tholenaars

Plantsome co-founder and CEO Kevin Tholenaars moved to Port Moody, B.C., six years ago from the Netherlands. When Plantsome's founding team realized there were very clear signals that the needs of consumers in the archaic home and garden industry were not being met, the idea for Plantsome was born. In March of 2020, Plantsome opened its digital doors to the public -- right in the middle of a global pandemic! It was scary but it ended up being the right service at the right time. As people were forced to look closer to home for hobbies and things to keep them occupied, many flocked to plant care as a new obsession. Plantsome delivers tropical plants to homes all across Canada using sustainably sourced packaging and custom-designed boxes for safe transportation of plants. Plantsome also has an app that helps customers take care of their plants by sending watering and fertilizer alerts. 

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• What is Plantsome?
• How did it get started? 
• How do you order plants?
• Where do you ship to?  
• How do you ship live plants with our varying temperatures?
• Are there any trends you've noticed people ordering? 
• You also have an app.  How does that work?

Find Plantsome online:

• Website: www.plantsome.ca 
• Facebook: @plantsomeCA 
• Instagram: @plantsome_ca

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing have been talking all about planning your garden, growing hydroponically, and growing anywhere you can squeeze in a plant! In this episode, returning guest Julia Dimakos discusses growing under lights and her new e-book How to Plan a Vegetable Garden, available now at www.juliadimakos.com

About Julia Dimakos

Julia started growing food after having children and fell in love with it!  She gardens organically and tries to keep things simple while growing new and uncommon vegetables each year. Her garden is located in Mono, Ontario, on 25 acres on the Niagara Escarpment. Two years ago, Julia expanded her vegetable garden from 2000 to 7000 square feet, continuing in the formal kitchen garden style.

She loves to inspire others to have their own vegetable gardens by showing them the simpler side of gardening. She enjoys teaching others, speaking, and holding workshops. You can read her blog at www.juliadimakos.com.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• You've been growing under lights now for 10 years; was there a time you weren't using lights to grow your plants? Why do plants do better with grow lights?
• When should someone consider adding lights to their space to help their plants?
• Julia answers listener questions regarding how close the plants are to the lights and how long the lights should be on.
• You use both LED and fluorescent lights with what you grow.
  • Do you find one works better than the other?
  • Do you recommend either LED or fluorescent depending on what you're growing or is it more situational or a personal preference?
    • • What do you look for when purchasing a light?
      • Is there a best way to set them up when growing?
      • How does one know how long to leave their lights on?
• Can you describe your setup? Shelf units? Do you rotate plants onto different shelves?

You can find Julia online here, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.

You can also listen to past Down the Garden Path podcasts featuring Julia:

Digging Deep with Veggies

Growing Indoors

Autumn Edibles

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This week on Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw welcomes author Mariam Pirbhai to the podcast to discuss her creative nonfiction book, Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging.

About Mariam Pirbhai

Mariam was born in Pakistan and lived in England, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines before her family immigrated to Canada in the late 1980s. She completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of Montreal and received the Governor General's Gold Medal. Mariam lives and works in Waterloo, where she enjoys photographing and painting the natural landscapes of southwestern Ontario. An English professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, Mariam also wrote the award-winning short story collection Outside People and Other Stories, and the novel titled Isolated Incident.

Here are some of the topics we covered in this episode:

• Her journey through the landscapes of her life on her way to her current home
• How her travels in the past shaped the gardener she is now
• Her innate understanding of gardening meant that trees in the garden should produce fruit
• How her search for a fruiting mulberry tree proved challenging
• How the increased time spent in nature during the pandemic made her more aware of the plants in nature versus what we historically have been cultivating in our gardens
• Her deep dive into invasive plants
  • What belongs and doesn't belong in the garden
• The removal of a large amount of Buckthorn trees from the property
  • How it opened up a new area for her garden to expand

Where you can find Mariam Pirbhai:

• Website: www.mariampirbhai.ca
• Instagram: @mariampirbhai
• Facebook: Mariam Pirbhai 

Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca

On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. 

In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon.

Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.

In this week's episode of the Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing speak with Tyler Baras, chief science officer and co-founder of Area 2 Farms in Arlington, Virginia, about home hydroponics.

Tyler has a range of urban agricultural experiences from homesteading to commercial hydroponics. He has worked as a grower for 3 Boys Farm Inc., one of the first certified organic hydroponic farms in the United States. In 2015, Tyler wrote one of the best-selling hobby hydroponic books, DIY Hydroponic Gardens: How to Design and Build an Inexpensive System for Growing Plants in Water. In 2017, Tyler wrote Roadmap to Growing Leafy Greens and Herbs, an educational book for new growers and investors interested in commercial hydroponic production of leafy greens in greenhouses and indoor farms. In 2021, he wrote Home Hydroponics: Small-space DIY Growing Systems for the kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom, and bath.

For more on Tyler Baras, please visit FarmerTyler.com.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• For people new to the term, what does it mean to grow hydroponically?
• Do you buy plants and transition them to water or can you start seeds in water?
• What are some of the things one should consider before starting a hydroponic set vs. growing in soil? Can anyone do it?
• If there isn't any soil, how are our plants being supported in a hydroponic system?
• How do we feed our plants?
• What do you think of kits like "Click and Grow" or Aero Gardens, etc.?
• Can you tell us about some of the materials we'd need for a simple beginner setup?  Are there DIY starter kits?
• Where can we buy the products for a DIY setup?
• For those of us who might be a bit more adventurous, are there any other items we could use to enhance our hydroponic setup?
• Your new book Home Hydroponics is filled with interesting DIY hydroponic projects. Tell us about how the book came about?
• What are some of your favourite projects?

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This week on the Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing talk about your plant and garden goals for 2022.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• How do Matt and Joanne each plan their garden?
• What are the benefits of planning ahead, starting a garden plan for growing vegetables or flowering annuals for a cutting garden?
• How do you determine the goals for your garden and outdoor spaces?
• What tools are available for you to help you plan your garden?
  • journals, photos, etc.
  • seed catalogues or online ordering from seed companies
    • Ranunculus and Anemone bulbs
    • Peony roots
• Now is a good time to look at your ornamental garden and its winter interest.
  • What do you like in other gardens? How can you add it to your own garden for interest in the winter months?

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

Welcome to the new year and a new season of Down the Garden Path! In this week's episode, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing review Garden Media Group's 2022 Garden Trends Report with returning guest Katie Dubow.

Katie Dubow is the President of Garden Media Group, a women-owned and run public relations firm specializing in the home and garden industry and celebrating 33 years in business. Author of the annual Garden Trends Report, Dubow scouts the world for garden trends.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• Tell us about yourself and what you do for Garden Media Group.
• What else does Garden Media do to support the industry?
• The trends report is highly anticipated every year and it's something Garden Media Group has published annually since 2001. How much work goes into producing the report and how are you able to spot trends?
• What was some of the thinking behind the report title this year: From Crisis to Innovation?
• Let's walk through some of the main points that make up the Garden Trends report.
  • Shoppertainment
  • On-Demand Flowers
  • Living Television
  • Bridging the Gap

Click here to get your copy.

Find Garden Media Group online:

Website: www.gardenmediagroup.com

Facebook: Garden Media Group

Instagram: GardenMedia

LinkedIn: Garden Media Group

Twitter: GardenMedia

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In the final Down the Garden Path episode of the year, Matt and Joanne look at some of their favourite gift ideas for the gardeners in your life, or maybe even for yourself.

Joanne's favourite gift ideas for gardeners:

• Floratopia by Jan Johnson
• Tiny Plants by Leslie Halleck
• Dahlia May Florals calendar
• Forged pocket pruner
• Radius Ergonomic Shovels
• Sun Joe electric leaf shredder

Matt's favourite gift ideas for gardeners:

• The Toronto & Golden Horseshoe Gardener's Journal
• The Whole Seed Catalog
• Garden kneeler
• Hori Hori knife
• Tool sharpener
• Root slayer carbon steel trowel and shovel
• Wheelbarrow organization shelf

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In the second-last episode of Down the Garden Path for the year, Matt and Joanne take a look back at the popular topics and guests of 2021. 

Don't miss Joanne and Matt as they take a look back at the popular topics and guests of 2021 on the Down the Garden Path podcast.

They also answer some listener questions:

• What does girdling mean as it refers to gardening?
• Are there any weeds that are good for your garden?
• Can you explain what the three numbers in fertilizer mean?
• What's the best way to lower the pH level in your lawn and garden?

Looking for the perfect gift for the gardener on your list? Tune in next week for Garden Gift Ideas.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, Matt and Joanne welcome author Sarah Battersby to discuss the 2022 Toronto & Golden Horseshoe Gardener's Journal, now celebrating its 30th year. This wonderful publication will help both you and your garden stay organized for the new year.

About Sarah Battersby
Along with coaxing anything to grow in her dry-shade city rock garden, Sarah has been carving a cultivated space out of a forest of lilacs and sumachs at her schoolhouse in Hastings County for 30 years. Sarah got the gardening bug with indoor plants as a teenager, co-writes at TorontoGardens.com and is particularly interested in planting for wildlife and for scent. She wishes she'd never planted that goutweed.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• How did the garden journal start?
• How did you and your sister Helen become involved?
• Tell us about the digital sourcebook.
• How is the book's creator, Margaret Bennet-Adler, still involved?
• What feedback have you received from last year which prompted changes this year?

To purchase a copy, visit GardenJournals.ca.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, Matt and Joanne welcome David Lin, owner of Dave's Air Plant Corner, to learn how to grow and care for this interesting and wonderful group of houseplants. 

About David Lin

David has been growing Tillandsia for more than seven years, and as soon as he started collecting them, he was hooked! His goal is to share these amazing plants with more people and hopefully, everyone can take a breather from their busy life and admire the unique beauty and characters of air plants.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• Tell us why you think air plants are so cool.
• What exactly is a "Tillandsia"?
• Do you remember what the first Tillandsia you purchased was?
• How do our Canadian listeners get plants from your shop?
• When buying air plants, what should you look for to make sure you're getting good air plants?
• How do we care for air plants once we get them home?
• Is there anything special we need to grow air plants?
• What's the best way to display air plants?
• What are some of your favourite air plants?
• Tell us about 'Botanical Toronto' this Saturday, November 27

• www.davesairplantcorner.com
• Facebook: Dave's Air Plant Corner
• YouTube: Dave's Air Plant Corner
• Instagram: @davesairplantcorner

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, Matt and Joanne welcome Joe Salemi, Deputy Executive Director of Ontario's premier horticultural trades association, Landscape Ontario. Joe shares the many opportunities a trade association like Landscape Ontario has for landscape professionals and addresses some of the issues currently facing the landscape industry.

About Joe Salemi

Joe is a people-first leader with over 18 years in the professional landscape industry, a career culminating in the observation of the challenges and barriers landscape horticulture business owners face daily. Joe has a combined background with trade association management and driving a vertical market software company. He is a sales leader and product specialist, with a high degree of marketing prowess who focuses on developing relationships for mutual benefit. Joe's passion is helping companies build efficiencies, increase capacity, and boost profits.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• What is Landscape Ontario?
• What is the benefit to the customers of hiring Landscape Ontario members?
• How do you become a member of Landscape Ontario?
• Professional development opportunities, apprenticeship, and certification.
  • Skills Advance Ontario: second year, test pilot – www.growoutdoors.ca
• Labour crisis management
  • industry hiring hall concept
  • apprenticeship
  • foreign labour
• Landscape Ontario Congress, IPM symposium, and landscape designer's conference
• Covid-19 task force

• www.landscapeontario.com
• Facebook: Landscape Ontario
• Twitter: @green_for_life
• LinkedIn: Landscape Ontario
• YouTube: Landscape Ontario
• Instagram: @landscapeontario

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, Matt and Joanne welcome landscape designer and author Jan Johnsen to learn more about her book Floratopia - 110 Flower Garden Ideas for Your Yard, Patio, or Balcony. Her latest book is packed with colourful photos exploring the many flower varieties for spaces of all sizes and addresses common gardening questions, with great tips for gardeners of all skill levels.

Jan Johnsen began her professional life in Japan in a landscape architecture office. She has been a principal in the landscape design firm Johnsen Landscapes and Pools, based in Westchester NY, for more than 30 years. Her natural design approach is evident in the landscapes that she shares in her books: Heaven is a Garden, The Spirit of Stone, and Gardentopia. And of course, the book we're going to talk about today: Floratopia.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• What inspired your latest book 'Floratopia'?
• The format change is different from your earlier books. Why is that?
• Tell us about your other books.
• Your book is filled with so many wonderful tips, one of them being the benefit of not cutting plant material back.
• Does every design you do involve a pool?
• The use of annuals in the landscape and the value they add to the garden
• Dutch landscape designer Piet Ouldof's garden design tips
• Claude Monet designed the gardens he painted.
• What are some of your favourite perennials to use in containers?
• The power of umbel-shaped flowers.
• When you do a design, do you spec annuals for a landscape?
• Deer-resistant, not deer-proof, flower gardens and plants: what can we plant?
• Jan is startig a new online course touring her gardens and sharing her knowledge in the spring of 2022.

• www.janjohnsen.com
• Facebook: The Spirit of Stone and Heaven Is A Garden
• >Twitter: @janjohnsen23
• Pinterest: Jan Johnsen
• YouTube: Jan Johnsen
• Instagram: @johnsendesign

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, Matt and Joanne welcome horticulturist and author Leslie Halleck. Tune in as they discuss Leslie's latest book, Tiny Plants, and explore the fascinating world of tiny indoor plants, inspiring you to creatively get growing indoors.

Leslie began her career in horticulture in 1992, where she worked at and helped run a retail plant nursery while operating her own small gardening business. In December 1998, she started at the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden as Curator of Plants, and then Director of Horticulture Research. One of her specific duties included the creation of their nationally recognized plant trials program and gardens, design, and plant selection for all the display gardens, plant collections management, teaching, and website development.

In 2000, Leslie launched Halleck Horticultural which she operated in addition to her position at the Dallas Arboretum. For almost a decade, Halleck Horticultural has provided a variety of services to the green industry, including horticultural consulting, marketing, and branding plants and development -- as well as garden center design -- and consulting. Leslie has won multiple awards for writing, creative direction, and marketing from the Turf & Ornamental Communicators Association, including the coveted Gardner Award for Writing in 2017.

• Leslie shared that during an internship in Puerto Rico to study the effects of Hurricane Hugo. she discovered a colony of tiny orchids (Lepanthes rupestris) growing and this led to a lifelong interest in "tiny plants" and inspired her latest book.
• Tiny Plants are defined as species that are genetically determined to grow under 6 inches.
• During the show, Leslie breaks down the basic plant classification based on how plants grow and uses that to explain the differences in a variety of "tiny" plants in the book.
• These classifications help us to determine how to best group these plant types together, and the best way in our indoor environments (e.g., window sills vs grown under glass)
• The book outlines some great ways to display our tiny plants
• What is the difference between a terrarium and a cloche?
• Leslie answers some listener questions about indoor lighting and bonsai and tells us about the Garden Society Project.

• You can order all of her books (Tiny Plants, Gardening Under Lights, Plant Parenting) on her website: www.lesliehalleck.com
• Twitter: @lesliehalleck
• Pinterest: lesliehalleck
• YouTube: lesliehalleck
• Instagram: @lesliehalleck

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This week on Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw welcomes Julia Dimakos back to the podcast to discuss growing tomatoes. From starting tomatoes from seed to transplanting the seedlings into the garden, Julia shares her tried-and-true tricks to growing them successfully from seed. 

About Julia Dimakos

Julia Dimakos' 7000 square foot kitchen garden is in Mono, Ontario, on 25 acres on the Niagara Escarpment. Julia has been growing vegetables and writing about gardening for over 13 years. She was twice published in Canadian Organic Grower magazine and became a published author in July 2022 with her first book, Tea Gardening for Beginners.

Here are some of the questions and topics covered in this episode:

• How to start tomato seeds and the type of pots to use
  • It's not too late during this first week of May to start as the seedlings are quite tough.
  • You can put many seeds in a container: as they grow, they are easy to separate from the roots.
• The difference between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes
  • It is important to know what variety you can and want to grow so you know how to support the plant in the garden appropriately.
  • Spoiler alert: indeterminate tomatoes need support in the form of very TALL stakes!
• Julia shares some great tips on fertilizer and watering
  • The importance of watering to avoid blossom end rot on your tomatoes
• Tune in and then go buy some seeds of an unusual variety of tomatoes!

Click here to watch this episode on YouTube!

Where you can find Julia Dimakos:

• Website: www.juliadimakos.com
• Instagram: @juliadimakos
• YouTube: @gardeninggirl 

Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca

On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. 

In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon.

Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.

Every fall on Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw review the benefits of not cleaning up the garden as plants and leaf debris overwinter many beneficial insects. There are, however, some pest concerns in the garden you can take steps to manage now. In this episode, Joanne and Matt discuss a few major garden pests which have been causing some trouble in their own gardens, some of which you may have heard of and some new ones.

Matt and Joanne discuss:

• Gypsy moth, also known as LD Moth
• When to use BTK to kill the caterpillars and how and when to get the traps to kill the adult male moths.
• Some things you can do to prevent the caterpillars from boxwood tree moth.

• Boxwood blight:
  • Life cycle, controls, what to look for in the garden. There is no known treatment for blight.
  • If infested, it is important to remove and destroy plants and disinfect your garden tools, etc.
  • Identify and manage common problems with boxwoods
    
    
• Recommendations when bringing houseplants inside, common pests and their control.

Resources mentioned in the show: 

https://onnurserycrops.com/author/jenllewellyn/ 

https://landscapeontario.com/box-tree-moth-help

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

Thanks for listening! Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe!

In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, Matt and Joanne welcome Guy Ruccolo, the owner of Blue Star Nursery, a gardening centre located in Windsor, Ontario.

Guy answers a few of our questions:

• What's your background in the industry?
• How did you come to own Blue Star Nursery?
• What happens each season at Blue Star? Can you give us a year-at-a-glance look?
• Tell us about the products you carry at your garden centre. Do you grow your own plants?
• How do you find climate change affecting the plants we're selecting and planting?
• Do you warranty your plants? (The unpredictable weather has affected plants so much that now they are warrantying regular-priced plants until Nov 1st.)
• What do you do with the plant material you don't sell by the end of the year?
• What is the effect of certain bans on insecticides on plant choices?
• How have you found the pandemic has affected the horticulture industry?
• What have your biggest challenges been over the last year and a half with Covid-19?
• What are some of the new and hot plants your customers are asking for?

Guy said the hot trend this year is fruit trees, especially the four-in-one fruit tree!

He also recommended applying nematodes on your lawn to address grubs. The Windsor area is currently being hit hard by them. Mosquito Barrier (made with Californian Garlic Juice) is amazing for treating your yard for mosquitos and can even help with Japanese beetles.

• Firelight Tidbit Hydrangea– new dwarf paniculata hydrangea
• Summer Crush Hydrangea– intense " red" macrophyla hydrangea
• Firefly Nightglow Diervilla – Native Pollinator, Burgundy Foliage with yellow flowers, part shade to shade
• Brandywine Maple– Acer Rubrum, seedless 30ft Maple tree

You can find Blue Star Nursery online at www.bluestarnursery.com.

To learn more about how to apply nematodes, listen to our episode Applying Nematodes.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe!

In this episode of Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw discuss how to keep your roses protected all winter long. Different roses require varying levels of care and protection. Listen to this week's podcast for tips on keeping your roses growing beautifully every year.

• What are the types of roses?
  • Hybrid tea, floribunda, grandiflora, shrub roses (knock out roses), carpet roses, miniature
• What are some ways you can protect your roses for the winter?
  • Learn how to mound your roses for the winter.
  • What is a rose cone? Is it better than mounding a rose?
  • What are some ways you can protect your rose from rodents and rabbits?
• When should you wake up your roses for the season?
• How should you prune each rose in the spring for its best start?
• How can you protect your roses from pests and diseases like Japanese beetles and black spot
• Answers to your frequently asked questions about climbing roses
• How much sun do roses really need to be successful?
• Learn the importance of confirming the size of the mature rose bush and leaving space for it to grow; this allows for good air circulation.
• It's okay to remove a struggling rose bush and replace it with a more disease-resistant variety.

Past shows:

Japanese Beetles
Applying Nematodes

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw discuss "lasagna gardening."

Lasagna gardening helps you build healthy soil, even in the most challenging locations and without the back-breaking labour. Whether you're growing beautiful flowers or tasty vegetables, lasagna gardening is a great way to easily give your plants healthy living soil.

• What is lasagna gardening?
• When is the best time to start your lasagna garden and why?
• What tools and materials do you need to build a lasagna garden?
• How long does it take to put together a lasagna garden?
• How long does it take until the lasagna garden is ready to use?
• What are some of the pros and cons of lasagna gardening?

Past shows:

My Fall Landscaping Project, November 2016

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to

In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, Matt and Joanne welcome returning guest Gardening Girl Julia Dimakos to discuss autumn edibles and her gardening endeavors for 2021. Even though the days are getting shorter, Julia shares some of the wonderful edibles you can still plant for a late-season harvest and to help us get ready for next spring.

About Julia Dimakos

Julia started growing food after having children and fell in love with it!  She gardens organically and tries to keep things simple while growing new and uncommon vegetables each year. Her garden is located in Mono, Ontario, on 25 acres on the Niagara Escarpment. Two years ago, Julia expanded her vegetable garden from 2000 to 7000 square feet, continuing in the formal kitchen garden style.

She loves to inspire others to have their own vegetable gardens by showing them the simpler side of gardening. She enjoys teaching others, speaking, and holding workshops. You read her blog at www.juliadimakos.com.

Julia answers a few of our questions:

• In February you mentioned you were expanding the garden. How many square feet is it this year, and what did you plant in your expansion?
• In February, we talked about all the wonderful vegetables you were growing for 2021. What were some of the plants you were most excited to grow this year and how did they turn out?
• What were some of the challenges you faced in the garden this year?
• How do we know when late-season fruit and vegetables, like melons and pumpkins, are ready?
• What can we start growing in September for a mid-to-late fall harvest?
• What should we be planting now for next year?

Julia also answered a wide range of listener questions.

You can find Julia online here, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.

You can also listen to past Down the Garden Path shows featuring Julia:

Digging Deep with Veggies

Growing Indoors

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw cover a variety of gardening topics in their September Grab Bag podcast. Join them as they answer listener questions and share with you what is happening in the garden centre and in their own gardens.

• What's happening in each of their gardens
• garlic
• bulb planting
• fall plants
• lawn-to-do's

September 20th: Fall vegetable gardening with Gardening Girl Julia Dimakos

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this last Down the Garden Path podcast of August, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw wrap up the summer months by getting your questions answered!

Matt and Joanne conclude their month-long discussion of popular flowering trees in the landscape, and their summer of deep dives into the perennial, shrub, and tree staples of our landscapes covering a few trees they didn't discuss in previous episodes and then focus on your gardening dilemmas.

Learn more about:

• Ornamental Flowering Cherry tree - Prunus spp.
  • Kwanzaan Cherry tree - large ornamental cherry tree (30x30 ft)
  • Mount Fuji Cherry tree
• Redbud - Cercis canadensis. Native shrub/tree
  • Different cultivars: Weeping Redbud, Lavender Twist Redbud, Forest Pansy
• Tulip Tree - Liriodendron tulipfera

Trees: Native Trees

Trees: Japanese Maples

Trees: Questions & Answers

Trees: Native Tree Care

Trees in the June Garden

September 6th: Encore presentation of September in the Garden

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this episode of Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw continue their month-long discussion of popular flowering trees with a look at some of the other popular flowering tree cultivars we often see in the landscape.

Tune in this week as Joanne and Matt discuss:

• The following popular flowering tree groups, their preferences, size, zones, and recommended cultivars:
  • Crab Apple – Malus spp.
  • Ivory Silk Lilac – Syringa reticulata.
  • Magnolia – Magnolia spp.
  • Ornamental Flowering Pear – Pyrus spp.
  • Serviceberry – Amelanchier alnifolia.
  • Serviceberry – Amelanchier canadensis.
  • Serviceberry – Amelanchier x grandiflora 'Autumn Brilliance'
  • Tartarian Maple – Acer tartaricum.

Joanne and Matt also answer some listener questions:

• What is a cultivar?
• What are grafted trees?
• How can you reduce stress to your trees?
  • What are the best practices to reduce the stress?
• How do you choose a fruit tree?

Trees: Native Trees

Trees: Japanese Maples

Trees: Questions & Answers

Trees: Native Tree Care

Trees in the June Garden

August 30th: Your Questions, Our Answers

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this episode of Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw continue their month-long discussion on flowering trees with a look at some of the popular flowering species of dogwood.

Joanne and Matt discuss:

• Where does the term 'dogwood' come from?
• Common species, their popular cultivars, and growing conditions of the dogwoods found in garden centres (soil, temperature, zones, lighting and watering)
• Is the fruit that appears on dogwoods edible?
• When do dogwoods need to be pruned?
• How do you propagate dogwoods?
• What are some of the plants they combine well within the landscape?

Trees: Native Trees

Trees: Japanese Maples

Trees: Questions & Answers

Trees: Native Tree Care

Trees in the June Garden

August 23rd: Large Flowering Trees

August 30th: Your Questions, Our Answers

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this episode of Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw continue their month-long discussion on flowering trees with a look at some of the medium-sized flowering landscape specimens.

Joanne and Matt pick up where they left off last week and expand their answers to some questions they are were unable to explore fully:

• What is considered a "standard" flowering tree?
• How are standard, or small flowering trees, formed?
• Where do we measure the height of a standard tree?
• How are we using them in the landscape?
• Some cultivars of standard flowering shrubs include:
  • Lilac, European Snowball Viburnum, Rose of Sharon, Flowering Crab Apple, Dapple Willow

Trees: Native Trees

Trees: Japanese Maples

Trees: Questions & Answers

Trees: Native Tree Care

Trees in the June Garden

August 16th: Flowering Dogwoods

August 23rd: Large Flowering Trees

August 30th: Your Questions, Our Answers

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this episode of Down the Garden Path podcast, Joanne welcomes Katie Tamony of Monrovia Plants to dispel five myths about growing roses.

About Katie Tamony Katie's official title is Chief Marketing Officer, but really, she is Monrovia's chief storyteller and trendspotter. She has more than 25 years of expertise in the lifestyle and leisure industries.

About Monrovia Inspired by the beauty of plants, gardens, and landscapes everywhere, Harry E. Rosedale, Sr. founded Monrovia in 1926 to be a premier grower of shrubs and trees. Monrovia collaborates with plant breeders worldwide to introduce improved plant varieties to North America. Monrovia plants flourish once planted to beautify gardens and landscapes. Visit Monrovia.com to learn more.

Here are some of the questions and topics covered in this episode:

• Myth #1: Roses are too fussy.
  • We discussed how when you give the roses what they need, they are not very fussy. Katie mentioned the Floribunda rose variety called Grace and Grit. It is a nice repeat bloomer that once established puts on a show. Available in White/Red/ Pink and Yellow.
• Myth #2: Roses are prone to diseases.
  • The roses on the market now are much more disease-resistant than your grandmother's roses. Monrovia's Nitty Gritty™ is incredibly durable and disease-resistant.
  • This ground cover series will look great in the garden or in a container. The double blooms are available in peach, yellow, red, pink and white. This rose is also self-cleaning so no need to trim or deadhead throughout the season.
• Myth#3: Roses are water hogs.
  • This common myth boosts roses' reputation as being a difficult plant to grow.
  • Roses actually like it hot and dry. Once established, roses do not need a lot of extra watering and can deal with the same amount as the rest of your garden.
• Myth #4: Roses are no longer frangrant.
  • Well, the fragrance is back baby! This may have been true up until a few years ago but breeders have been working hard to bring the fragrance back in the new easy to grow varieties.
  • Monrovia's new Eau de Parfum rose collection features big romantic blooms that are easy to grow and very fragrant. Available in Berry, Bling, Blush and Bubbly.
• Myth #5: Roses don't grow in my tough garden conditions.
  • Several rose varieties bust this myth.
  • As mentioned, Nitty Gritty™ and Grace N Grit are known for doing well in tough conditions.
  • If you need an exceptionally hardy rose, then Monrovia's Seaside Swirl Rose collection is just what you are looking for. A Rugosa rose variety that comes in pink, red and blush with the Rugosa toughness and exceptional fragrance. They are also tolerant of road salt but are more compact and tidy than the typical Rugosa rose. Maxing out at 3 ft tall.

Find Monrovia online:

• • www.Monrovia.com
  • Facebook: @monroviaplants
  • Instagram: @monroviaplants
  • Pinterest: @monroviaplants
  • Twitter: @monroviaplants

Find Down the Garden Path online: Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca

On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This week, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw start the month exploring a new topic on Down the Garden Path: flowering trees. In this episode, they begin with a look at small flowering trees, which are referred to as standard trees.

Joanne and Matt discuss:

• What is considered a "standard" flowering tree?
• How are standard, or small flowering trees, formed?
• Where do we measure the height of a standard tree?
• How are we using them in the landscape?
• Some cultivars of standard flowering shrubs include:
  • Hydrangea, Ninebark, Weigela, Weeping Pea Shrub, Smoke Bush, Flowering Almond, Rose trees, Cotoneaster
• Other non-flowering standard forms:
  • Junipers, Nest Spruce, Globe Blue Spruce

August 9th: Happy Birthday Questions & Answers

August 16th: Flowering Dogwoods

August 23rd: Large Flowering Trees

August 30th: Your Questions, Our Answers

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw explore some of the most popular shrubs to grace nursery benches and gardens. In this episode, they take a look at weigelas, their colourful foliage, seasons of bloom, and the different sized cultivars to fit perfectly in any garden.

Joanne and Matt discuss:

• How to pronounce weigelas
• Growing conditions: soil, temperature, zones, lighting and watering
• Blooming: type, when and for how long, what colours
• Their use and value to the perennial garden
• Cultivars of note for each plant

Shrubs: Pruning - July 9th, 2020

Shrubs: Evergreens - July 15th, 2020

Hydrangeas - July 16th, 2018

Shrubs: Nativars - July 28th, 2020

August: A month dedicated to flowering trees, including standard trees, flowering dogwoods and large flowering trees.

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw explore some of the most popular shrubs to grace nursery benches and gardens. In this episode, they discuss the many colourful ninebarks, their multiple seasons of interest, and the different cultivars which fit perfectly in any garden.

Matt and Joanne review:

• Ideal growing conditions: soil, temperature, zones, lighting and watering
  • Full sun to part shade for best colour
  • Quick growing
  • Zones 2-9
  • Transplant well as they are very adaptable to different soil conditions
  • Heights range from three to six feet depending on cultivar with steps arching as they mature
• Blooming: type, when and for how long, what colours
  • Bloom in late spring to early summer with white or pink button-type flowers
• Their use and value to the perennial garden
  • Interesting seed heads remain after flowering
• Native to North America, Ninebark's cultivars include:
  • Old fashioned Diablo
  • Amber Jubilee Ninebark
  • Little Devil Ninebark
  • Tiny Wine Ninebark
  • Tiny Wine Gold Ninebark
  • Summerwine Ninebark
  • Coppertina Ninebark
  • Lemon Candy Ninebark
  • Dart's Gold Ninebark

Shrubs: Pruning

Shrubs: Evergreens

Shrubs: New for 2020

Shrubs: Nativars

August: A month dedicated to flowering trees, including standard trees, flowering dogwoods and large flowering trees.

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw explore some of the most popular shrubs to grace nursery benches and gardens. In this episode, Matt and Joanne finish up where they left off in last week's conversation about hydrangeas.

To listen to Hydrangeas Part One, click here.

In Hydrangeas: Part 2 – Panicle and Mountain, Joanne and Matt discuss:

• Hydrangea growing conditions: soil, temperature, zones, lighting and watering
• Blooming: type, when and for how long, what colours
• Their use and value to the perennial garden
• Cultivars of note for each plant
  • Paniculata Hydrangea cultivars
  • Limelight Hydrangea
  • Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea
  • Phantom Hydrangea
  • Quickfire Hydrangea
  • Smaller varieties of Paniculata Hydrangea are
  • Little Lime Hydrangea
  • Little Quickfire Hydrangea
  • Bobo Hydrangea
  • Little Lime Hydrangea
• Serrata Hydrangea cultivars
  • Tuff Stuff Hydrangea
  • Beni-Gaku Hydrangea
  • Smaller varieties:
    • Tiny Tuff stuff
    • Tiny Tuff Stuff Red
    • Tiny Tuff Stuff Aha

Shrubs: Pruning

Shrubs: Evergreens

Shrubs: New for 2020

Shrubs: Nativars

August: A month dedicated to flowering trees, including standard trees, flowering dogwoods and large flowering trees.

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw take a deep dive into some of the most popular shrubs which grace the nursery benches and our gardens. In this episode, they begin their discussion with a two-part series on hydrangeas.

In Hydrangeas: Part 1 – Annabelle & Oakleaf, Joanne and Matt discuss:

• Growing conditions: soil, temperature, zones, lighting and watering
• Blooming: type, when and for how long, colours
• Cultivars of note for each plant
• Annabelle or Hydrangea arborescens cultivars
  • Hydrangea arborescens Incrediball
  • Hydrangea arborescens Invincibelle Spirit
  • Hydrangea arborescens Invincibelle Limetta
• Oakleaf Hydrangea or Hydrangea quercifolia cultivars
  • Hydrangea quercifolia Alice
  • Hydrangea quercifolia Pee Wee
  • Hydrangea quercifolia Ruby Slippers

Shrubs: Pruning

Shrubs: Evergreens

Shrubs: New for 2020

Shrubs: Nativars

August: A month dedicated to flowering trees, including standard trees, flowering dogwoods and large flowering trees.

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This week on Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw wrapped up their deep dive into some of the colourful and resilient staples of the perennial garden with a look at a favourite of many, perennial geraniums, or cranesbills.

Matt and Joanne explain:

• the difference between hybrid, cultivar and variety; this is consistent across all the perennials discussed this month.
• how they are different plants from the annual geraniums or pelargoniums, the popular bedding plant.

Matt gives a great overview of :

• Growing conditions: soil, temperature, zones, lighting and watering
• Blooming: the type, when and for how long, and what colours to expect
• Their use and value to the perennial garden
• Cultivars of note for each plant, including, but not limited to:
  • Geranium macrorrhizum (Bigroot Geranium)
  • Geranium sanguineum (Bloody Cranesbill)
  • Geranium Rozanne

Check out Joanne's pictures of her Rozanne and the cuttings she shared with a neighbour in the past two years on the @downthegardenpathpodcast Instagram account.

Joanne and Matt answered listener questions about Rozanne: Is it invasive? Does it grow in the shade? Tune in to hear their answers to these questions and more!

Intro to Perennials

Perennials: Peonies

Perennials: Groundcovers

Perennials: Ornamental Grasses

Perennials: Attracting Beneficial Insects

Shade: Beyond the Hosta

July: A month dedicated to popular shrubs, including hydrangeas, ninebarks and weigela.

August: A month dedicated to flowering trees, including standard trees, flowering dogwoods and large flowering trees.

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on the podcast, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw take a deep dive into some of the colourful and resilient staples of the perennial garden. Last week on Down the Garden Path, they examined Echinacea & Rudbeckia, and in this episode, they discuss perennial foliage plants.

Tune in as Matt and Joanne discuss:

• Their favourite perennial foliage plants.
  • Matt's choices include: Ligularia, Rodgersia, Bugbane (Actaea), Lamium, Carpet Bugle, Kirengeshoma, Mukdenia, Mudgenia, Heuchera/Tiarella/Heucherella, Pulminaria, Sedum
• Growing conditions: soil, temperature, zones, lighting, watering.
• Blooming: Type, when and for how long, what colours.
• Use and value to the perennial garden.
• Cultivars of note for each plant.

Intro to Perennials

Perennials: Peonies

Perennials: Groundcovers

Perennials: Ornamental Grasses

Perennials: Attracting Beneficial Insects

Shade: Beyond the Hosta

June 28th: Pernnial Geraniums

July: A month dedicated to popular shrubs, including hydrangeas, ninebarks and weigela.

August: A month dedicated to flowering trees, including standard trees, flowering dogwoods and large flowering trees.

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This month on Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw take a deep dive into some of the colourful and resilient staples of the perennial garden. Last week's topic was Salvias and Speedwells and in this episode, they discuss Echinacea & Rudbeckia, also known as Purple Coneflower and Black-eyed Susan.

Discover useful information about each plant, including:

• Growing conditions: soil, temperature, zones, lighting, watering.
• Blooming: type of blooms, when & for how long, what colours.
• Use and value of each to the perennial garden.
• Cultivars of note for each plant.

Matt and Joanne also answer some great listener questions about perennials:

• How deep should you plant in the garden?
• What does dead-heading mean?
• What are the best perennials and annuals to grow in the shade?
  • Suggested perennials: Brunnera, Lungwort, Tiarella, Bugbane, Columbine
  • Suggested annuals: Begonias, Calla lilies, Impatiens, Wishbone

Intro to Perennials

Perennials: Peonies

Perennials: Groundcovers

Perennials: Ornamental Grasses

Perennials: Attracting Beneficial Insects

Shade: Beyond the Hosta

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This week on Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw take a look at salvias and speedwells, the colourful and resilient staples of the perennial garden.

Perennial Salvias (also known as "sage") are a must-have for the garden border, blooming early summer to autumn! Planted in the spring, these aromatic beauties are great for cutting and beloved by bees and butterflies. They are drought-tolerant, too.

Surprisingly, they are in the mint family and also related to the kitchen herb, garden sage. They grow well across many zones and are available in different shades of purple, pink and white. As an added bonus, they stay upright without splitting in the center.

Matt and Joanne discuss:

• The growing conditions: soil, temperature, zones, lighting and watering
• Blooming: type, when and for how long and the colours
• Use and value to the perennial garden
• Cultivars of note for each plant
• The Color Spires and Profusion series from Proven Winners.

Speedwell (Veronica) is an easy-to-grow perennial with long tall spikes of small petals in different shades of blue, purple, pink, or white. Speedwells are a little shorter than salvias and some varieties are even prostrate, offering more of a ground cover.

Matt and Joanne discuss:

• The growing conditions: it grows best in full sun and best be deadheaded to extend bloom
• The Magic Show series from Proven Winners

Intro to Perennials

Perennials: Peonies

Perennials: Groundcovers

Perennials: Ornamental Grasses

Perennials: Attracting Beneficial Insects

Shade: Beyond the Hosta

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, Matt and Joanne welcome returning guest Gardening Girl Julia Dimakos to discuss digging deep with veggies.

Julia started growing food after having children and fell in love with it!  She gardens organically and tries to keep things simple while growing new and uncommon vegetables each year. Her garden is located in Mono, Ontario, on 25 acres on the Niagara Escarpment. Two years ago, Julia expanded her vegetable garden from 2000 to 7000 square feet, continuing in the formal kitchen garden style.

Julia has been growing vegetables and writing about gardening for over 10 years and has been published twice in the Canadian Organic Grower magazine. She loves to inspire others to have their own vegetable gardens by showing them the simpler side of gardening.

Julia answers a few of our questions:

• How is your garden doing?
• What did you do to prepare?
• Once everything is planted in the vegetable garden, do you have advice for what to do next?

Julia discusses her favourite tomato varieties and helps Joanne understand the difference between determinate and indeterminate tomato plants.

She also gives some excellent advice on growing lettuce and answers a listener's question about growing strawberries.

There's so much valuable information in this show, you won't want to miss it!

You can find Julia online here, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this episode of Down the Garden Path, landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses Hosta Virus X with returning guest Dawn Golloher from Gardens Plus.

Dawn Golloher is the owner-operator of Gardens Plus, an independent garden centre in Peterborough, Ontario, specializing in easy-care perennials. 

Here are some of the questions and topics covered in this episode:

• Can you tell us more about Hosta Virus X?
  • The virus was first discovered in 1996.
  • It spreads from the sap in the hosta leaves and roots.
  • The best way to protect your plants is to buy from reputable sources and to practice good hygiene when dividing or cleaning up hostas.
  • Use disinfectant wipes or have a bottle of diluted bleach handy to spray down your tools and then wipe off.
  • This would help many things from spreading throughout our gardens, including powdery mildew.
• Hosta Virus X doesn't kill the hosta.
  • It will just have mottled or blotchy colouring and the hostas may not thrive in the long run.
  • It will also not spread to other perennials in your garden.
• The best way to remove an infected plant
• Three ways to recognize Hosta Virus X:
  • ink bleeding
  • mottled tissue
  • collapsed tissue
• Gardens Plus is opening May 9th this year and will be open Thursday to Sunday until June 30th, 2024.

Find Gardens Plus online:

• www.GardensPlus.ca
• Facebook: @gardensplus
• Instagram: @gardensplus
• YouTube: @gardensplus
• Pinterest: @gardensplus
• Twitter: @gardensplus

Find Down the Garden Path online: Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca

On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. 

In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon.

Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.

This week on Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw take a look at new and unusual annuals in the garden and the best way to care for them.

Some of the topics include:

• What's the difference between annuals and perennials?
• How do we take care of our annuals in the garden?
  • Conditions that need consideration: light, soil, watering, fertilizing
• What's happening in the garden centres with the availability of annual plants.
• What are some of the new annuals for 2021?

Listener questions and feedback:

• What are some annuals that spread?
• Why has the price of annuals increased this year?
• What are the best hardy annuals?
• Listeners weighed in about whether they put their annuals in pots or the ground.
• Do you have any recommendations for soil additives for annuals?

Matt and Joanne also discuss the importance of water for annuals and how simply putting the right annual in the right spot can lead to greater success.

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

May is a busy gardening month as we prepare our gardens for a new season. But what about ourselves?  How we get ready to garden is just as important. This week on Down The Garden Path, we're joined by chiropractor Dr. Geoff Smith with the tips and tricks we need to keep ourselves safe, healthy, and happy while working in our gardens.

Dr. Geoff Smith is a chiropractor with 20 years of experience. He is the proud owner of Oshawa South Chiropractic Clinic and a team member at the Clarington Rehabilitation Clinic. Gardening injuries have been a common source of patients during his years of practice. He enjoys helping people keep up with their gardening adventures. Geoff's passions lay in the world of health and fitness. He is an avid trail runner and exercise enthusiast. Gardening was a natural fit and the COVID-19 pandemic provided the perfect opportunity to "dig in" and get started with a new healthy hobby.

Some of the things we discuss in this episode of Down the Garden Path:

• Although seen as a relaxing hobby, gardening can be physically demanding. What can we do to warm up before heading out into the garden each day?
  • Dr Smith talks about how stretching routines like yoga has many benefits for gardeners.
• Are there ways we can do things differently while gardening to prevent injury?
  • Dr. Smith discussed the importance of varying our positions and or the chores we are doing in the garden.
• Should we do a cool-down after we've finished working in the garden?
• What inspired you to start gardening last year? Tell us a bit about your gardens.
• As a new gardener, what are your thoughts on the types of tools to safely stay active in the garden?

You can find Dr. Smith online at www.oshawasouthchiropractic.com.

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This week on Down the Garden Path, landscape designers Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw kick off the month by answering your questions about planting and what you should be doing in the garden in May.

They cover a variety of topics, including:

• The popularity of fruit trees: Matt discusses cocktail trees with different varieties of fruit on one tree.
• Tomatoes & Potatoes: He also mentions a new "product" -- a tomato plant grafted on a potato, called Ketchup and Fries. Hilarious but true! Ask for it at your local garden centre. Once the tomato plant is done in the fall, you can harvest the potatoes in the pot below.
• Hydrangeas: Joanne discusses the challenges with Macrophylla Hydrangeas and/or the Easter Hydrangeas and why they shouldn't be planted in your GTA garden.
• Cedars: Matt discusses the differences in cedars in response to a listener's question about their hardiness.
• Roses: The popularity of roses and the hottest varieties: Now is the time to find that specific one you may be looking for, but tune in if you want to hear Matt help you determine which variety you should get based on the space you have.

Each week on Down The Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade.

And Matthew Dressing is a horticulturist and landscape designer. He owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, Joanne and Matthew do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and helpful topics. Their goal is to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.