Down The Garden Path Podcast

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.

Don't miss our conversation on autumn edibles with Gardening Girl Julia Dimakos.

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.

Some of the topics they cover in the September Grab Bag podcast:

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

Coming up next week:

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

About Your Hosts

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.

Tune in this week as Joanne and Matt finish their discussion on trees and answer listener questions.

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

Past tree-related episodes:

Trees: Native Trees

Trees: Japanese Maples

Trees: Questions & Answers

Trees: Native Tree Care

Trees in the June Garden

Upcoming Shows:

September 6th: Encore presentation of September in the Garden

About Your Hosts

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?

Past tree-related episodes:

Trees: Native Trees

Trees: Japanese Maples

Trees: Questions & Answers

Trees: Native Tree Care

Trees in the June Garden

Upcoming Shows:

August 30th: Your Questions, Our Answers

About Your Hosts

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.

Tune in to learn more about how to successfully include dogwoods in your garden.

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?

Past tree-related episodes:

Trees: Native Trees

Trees: Japanese Maples

Trees: Questions & Answers

Trees: Native Tree Care

Trees in the June Garden

Upcoming Shows:

August 23rd: Large Flowering Trees

August 30th: Your Questions, Our Answers

About Your Hosts

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.

Tune in to learn more about how to incorporate medium-sized flowering trees in your garden.

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

Past tree-related episodes:

Trees: Native Trees

Trees: Japanese Maples

Trees: Questions & Answers

Trees: Native Tree Care

Trees in the June Garden

Upcoming Shows:

August 16th: Flowering Dogwoods

August 23rd: Large Flowering Trees

August 30th: Your Questions, Our Answers

About Your Hosts

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, 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.

Tune in to learn more about how to incorporate standard flowering trees in your garden.

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

Upcoming Shows:

August 9th: Happy Birthday Questions & Answers

August 16th: Flowering Dogwoods

August 23rd: Large Flowering Trees

August 30th: Your Questions, Our Answers

About Your Hosts

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.

Tune in to learn more about how to successfully grow weigelas in your 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

Enjoy last year's Down the Garden Path podcast episodes on shrubs:

Shrubs: Pruning - July 9th, 2020

Shrubs: Evergreens - July 15th, 2020

Hydrangeas - July 16th, 2018

Shrubs: Nativars - July 28th, 2020

Upcoming Shows:

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

About Your Hosts

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.

Tune in to learn more about how you can include ninebarks in your 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

Enjoy last year's Down the Garden Path podcast episodes on shrubs:

Shrubs: Pruning

Shrubs: Evergreens

Shrubs: New for 2020

Shrubs: Nativars

Upcoming Shows:

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

About Your Hosts

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.

Tune in for the second in a two-part series on hydrangeas.

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

Enjoy last year's Down the Garden Path podcast episodes on shrubs:

Shrubs: Pruning

Shrubs: Evergreens

Shrubs: New for 2020

Shrubs: Nativars

Upcoming Shows:

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

About Your Hosts

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.