Down The Garden Path Podcast

Winter can be a gloomy bleak time of year, but that doesn't mean it has to be that way in the garden. In the season nine premiere of Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss how to create winter interest in your garden and landscape.

Discover how to create winter interest in your garden and landscape.

Here are some of the questions and topics Joanne and Matt cover in this episode:

• Thanks to all the listeners who wrote in over the break.
• Changes to the show format: addition of the Stepping Stone segment
• Join Matt and Joanne on social media!
  • Instagram: Down the Garden Path podcast
  • Facebook: Down the Garden Path Podcast group
• How do they define winter interest?
• How can you create winter interest in the garden?
  • Are plants the only way?
  • Preparing your garden for winter - the loss of winter interest.
  • Design considerations
• Joanne and Matt's plant recommendations for adding winter interest.

Resources mentioned during the show

Home Hydroponics with Tyler Baras

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 17 years. A horticulturist, college educator 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. You can find it on Amazon.

In this episode of the Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing answer questions about their book, Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, on The Landscape Ontario Podcast. In this monthly podcast, host Scott Barber has conversations on the issues shaping landscaping and horticulture in Ontario.

Scott asks Matt and Joanne a variety of questions:

• Tell us more about your background.
• What inspired you to write a book together?
• Can you speak to the importance of keeping our gardens low-maintenance?
  • Is the public, in general, receptive to this idea?
• Tell us about the different sections and topics covered.

Listen to Landscape Ontario on the Down the Garden Path podcast:

Landscape Ontario

Landscape Ontario

Find them online at www.landscapeontario.com, on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

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.

In the final episode of the Down the Garden Path podcast for 2022, Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss the pros and cons of buying a real tree vs. a fake tree.

Tune in to hear Joanne and Matthew discuss the pros and cons of choosing a real tree vs. a live tree.

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

• What type of tree do Joanne and Matthew put up and why?
• What is the environmental impact of each choice?
• Choosing an everlasting, or fake, tree: What do we need to know?
• Choosing a real/live tree: What do we need to know?
• Reasons why live trees are more expensive than ever.
• Rent-a-tree program: caring for a potted Christmas tree

Resources mentioned during the show

How to Grow Amaryllis: A short episode we created after many listeners wrote in to ask about them.

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.

In this episode of Down the Garden Path podcast, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing spotlight the classic holiday plant, Amaryllis. These easy-to-grow bulbs make great gifts or additions to your own holiday decorating.

Some of the topics they cover in this episode:

• the various ways you can purchase them
• what they require in order to grow
• tips on how to keep your bulb for next year

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!

With Christmas around the corner, you may still be looking for a gift for that special gardener in your life. In this episode of Down the Garden Path podcast, Matthew Dressing and Joanne Shaw are joined by Kristin Beane Sullivan from Garden Gate magazine. Kristin shares some of her favourite gardening gifts she's received, gifts she's given, and other good gifts for the gardener in your life.

About Kristin Beane Sullivan

In her 25 years at Garden Gate magazine, Kristin Beane Sullivan has been lucky to meet hundreds (if not thousands) of gardeners, tour and photograph countless gardens, and learn something from every single gardener she's met. She comes from a long line of farmers and gardeners, and today tends an ever-expanding urban garden with her husband, and three teenagers who are a lot more help in the garden than she was at their age.

Tune in to hear Joanne and Matt speak with Kristin Beane Sullivan about gifts for gardeners.

• Christmas is fast approaching. During your time at Garden Gate, and as a gardener yourself, what are your gift recommendations for this holiday season?
• What would be your top gift choices for new gardeners?
• What's your favourite gardening gift you've ever received and why?
• Tell us a bit about Garden Gate magazine. What amazing information can our listeners find within its pages?
• What topics does Horticulture magazine cover?
• What types of subscriptions can we get to these magazines?

Find Garden Gate magazine online:

Website: www.gardengatemagazine.com Instagram: @gardengatemagazine YouTube: @gardengatemagazine Facebook: @gardengatemagazine Pinterest: @gardengatemag

Find Horticulture magazine online:

Website: www.hortmag.com Instagram: @hort.mag Facebook: @HorticultureMagazine Pinterest: @hortmag

Other resources mentioned on the podcast:

DIY Gardening gift ideas

Garden Gate Store

2023 European Garden Tour

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.

This week on Down the Garden Path podcast, Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing wrap up authors' month by speaking with The Mocha Gardener, Ashlie Thomas, about her new book How to Become a Gardener. In it, Ashlie teaches readers how to empower themselves by creating food security at home.

About Ashlie Thomas

Ashlie Thomas is an author, food security and gardening advocate, and entrepreneur known on social media as The Mocha Gardener.

For nearly seven years, Ashlie worked in the scientific research sector and managed healthcare-based projects in academia. With a background in biology and chemistry, she is currently pursuing her graduate studies in food and nutritional science and undergoing training as a certified health and wellness coach through Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Outside of work and school, you will find Ashlie consulting and working with organizations to help bridge the gap between food security and chronic diseases in underserved and low-resourced communities. Using her passion for gardening and training in health coaching, she seeks to bring awareness through practice to growing issues of food insecurity, while empowering and educating others on how to take control of their wellness through growing the very thing that sustains them: good nutritious food.

Tune in to hear Joanne and Matt speak with author Ashlie Thomas about creating food security at home.

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

• What inspired you to write How to Become a Gardener?
• You start off with defining a garden. What is a garden?
• What's the history of Food to Table?
• Why are we, the gardeners, important?
• In the book, you draw the "journey to becoming a gardener." What does that look like?
• Later in the book, you say "gardening is rarely a solo adventure because you need something from someone, whether it be tools, soil, an extra set of hands, or even advice." At the beginning of Chapter 3, you have 13 useful tools for your garden. Can you tell us about your top three favourite tools?
• What is "Ashlie's Dozen?"
• How to Become a Gardener is more than a how-to guide. It's about empowerment. Tell us more.
• You finish off the book with lessons in the garden. Without spoiling the book, what are some of the lessons you feel are most important?

Find Ashlie Thomas online:

• Facebook: @the.mocha.gardener
• Instagram: @the.mocha.gardener
• YouTube: @TheMochaGardener
• Order "How to Become a Gardener" on Amazon

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.

In this episode of the Down the Garden Path podcast, landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing continue garden authors' month with a look at their new book, Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden.

In 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.

Packed with timely seasonal tips for each month to help you create the low-maintenance garden of your dreams, their new book takes the guesswork out of what to do and when to do it.

Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden is now available on Amazon.

Some of the topics discussed in this episode:

• Why did Joanne and Matt decide to write the book?

• What's inside?
  • How are the sections devised so gardeners can find the information they need quickly and easily?
    • Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter
  • What are Matt and Joanne's favourite sections?
• November in the garden:
  • What should you be doing this month?
    • Bulb planting and protecting Japanese maples for winter
• What are the larger sections of the book dedicated to?
  • Cedars
  • Fertilizing
  • Nematodes/White Grubs
  • Clematis
  • Spreading Grass Seed
  • Laying Sod
  • Lasagna Gardening
  • How to Do a Soil Test
  • Glossary

Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden is your roadmap to creating and maintaining a low-maintenance, sustainable garden, and Joanne and Matthew want to help you make it happen.

Order your copy today!

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.

Authors' month is in full swing on the Down the Garden Path podcast! This week, Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing welcome returning guest and garden author Stephanie Rose to discuss her latest books, Big Book of Botanical Crafts and The Regenerative Garden.

About Stephanie Rose

Stephanie Rose is the founder and creator of the popular website and blog, Garden Therapy. Based in Vancouver, she is an award-winning author, artist, and master gardener. She has written a number of books, including The Regenerative Garden and Garden Made. Her latest book, Big Book of Botanical Crafts, will be available shortly.

Tune in to hear Joanne and Matt speak with author Stephanie Rose about regenerative gardening.

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

The Regenerative Garden:

• What is regenerative gardening?
• What is the goal of permaculture?
• What is a functioning ecosystem?
• Where can we employ permaculture techniques in the garden?
  • Do you need a large space?
• What are the six elements of a living garden you discuss in your book?
  • Soil
  • Water
  • Plants
  • Climate
  • Ethics
  • Community
• What are some of the activities in the book you recommend our listeners try as an introduction to permaculture?
  • Stephanie discussed using ollas for sustainable watering and has instructions on how to make your own.

Big Book of Botanical Crafts

• Big Book of Botanical Crafts will be released this November 22nd.
  • It has 30 recipes to create all sorts of wonderful natural products.
  • The book is divided into three sections: Beauty/Candles/Cleaners. Learn how to use items from your own garden to create products in these categories.

You can learn more about how to purchase Stephanie's books here, find her online at www.gardentherapy.ca and on social media:

• Facebook: @gardentherapy
• Instagram: @garden_therapy
• Twitter: @garden_therapy
• YouTube: Garden Therapy
• Pinterest: @garden_therapy
• TikTok: @gardentherapyofficial

Stephanie also joined Matt and Joanne on the podcast two years ago to discuss her book Garden Alchemy. Listen to that episode here.

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!

When you think of tea, one of the last places you might think you could grow and make your own tea is Canada. This week, Matthew Dressing kicks off authors' month with his co-host, and Down the Garden Path serial guest superstar, Julia Dimakos. Julia graciously steps into Joanne Shaw's seat for the week to discuss her new book, Tea Gardening for Beginners.

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 12 years and has been published in Canadian Organic Grower magazine twice. She has just released her new book, Tea Gardening for Beginners.

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.

Learn how easy it is to grow, harvest, and prepare your own tea at home to create the perfect cup of tea.

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

• Tell us about your garden this summer.
  • What did you grow?
  • What challenges did you face?
  • What was new and exciting?
• Tea gardening. What is it?
• When I think of tea, maybe like most, we think of tea leaves, but teas can be made from so much more than just leaves.
  • How does one go about making a "tea" with leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds, and roots? Describe each.
  • Can you make tea with any part of the plant? If it's good to use the leaves, is it perfectly fine to use the roots, for example?
• In your book, you have some delicious tea recipes.
  • How does one come up with a tea recipe? Can you simply combine teas to create your own blends?
  • Can you share with us any tips and tricks we should use to make the best teas?

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

You can buy her new book, Tea Gardening for Beginners, here.

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

Growing Herbs

Growing Under Lights

Digging Deep with Veggies

Growing Indoors

Autumn Edibles

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.

This week, Down the Garden Path presents an encore presentation of Joanne and Matt's January 2022 Home Hydroponics podcast with Tyler Baras, chief science officer and co-founder of Area 2 Farms in Arlington, Virginia.

About Tyler Baras

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.

Don't miss Joanne and Matt's conversation with Tyler Boras about home hydroponics.

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?

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.