When people think about native plants, they often think of a wild meadow or an unkept urban lot. But natives offer many design opportunities and benefits to our gardens and landscapes. On this episode of Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss how to design with native plants and strike a balance in your garden between natives and the foreign ornamentals we love so much.

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

• How do you define native?
• Where to look for native plants?
• How should I start going about designing with native plants?
• Using nativars.
• “Hedges make edges.”

Resources mentioned during the show

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

Down the Garden Path Podcast

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

In their new book, Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and Matthew 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. It's now available 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 and Patreon.