Down The Garden Path Podcast

As we move through the month of October, we continue our adventure into waters many dare not tread: climate change and our environmental impact. From what climate change is and what we can do to help slow it down, to gardening in ever-changing climatic conditions, we dare venture where many fear to go. In this episode of Down the Garden Path, we continue our environmental impact conversation with ideas to help us around the house.

Some topics we cover in this week's podcast:

• Waste reduction week in Canada
• Recycling your e-waste: find out where by visiting www.recyclemyelectronics.ca
• Solar power for homes
• Reducing plastic use
• Purchasing more local products from your city or even country
• Using services like Freecycle, secondhand shops, upcycling
• TerraCycling (Nespresso, coffee pods, cosmetics)
• The importance of recycling running shoes. (Nike will recycle their shoes. The Running Room will take old running shoes back for recycling and donations can be made to Shoe4Africa)
• EOS recycling programs

Stay tuned for our last environmental impact episode in October:

October 26th: Climate Reality Project and Gardening in the Era of Climate Change with Deborah Pearson

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.

A new month means a new topic on the Down the Garden Path podcast. Each week in October, we'll be discussing our environmental impact. On this week's episode, we welcome Rose Dunn and Christine Polle from Eaarthfeels podcast.

Rose Dunn and Christine Polle are mothers who care passionately about the world we are leaving future generations. They believe that an important step towards a livable world is talking about climate change.

The Eaarth Feels podcast is for people feeling overwhelmed by the endlessly gloomy climate news. Rose and Christine offer soul-based conversations about climate change that explore the idea that climate change is happening for us as much as it is happening to us.

Rose Dunn is a sacred activist living amidst the beauty of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She believes the existential threat of climate catastrophe may be the greatest collaborative opportunity of our lifetime. Rose is committed to fostering the discussion of innovative, positive solutions for the climate crisis with a focus on the survival of all sentient beings.

Christine Polle is an educator, healer, author and earth activist. For the past 20 years, she has lived in Treaty 3 territory in northern Ontario. She believes that the key to personal and planetary healing is facing our deepest fears. A registered nurse for 25 years, Christine now has a wellness practice focused on helping women transform their relationship to their bodies, food and money.

Listen to the Eaarth Feels podcast at eaarthfeelspodcast.com,

Join us this week as we ask Rose and Christine:

• How do we simplify climate change for the average person?
• What can we do as individuals to help our climate crisis?

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, we've been looking at how to extend your gardening season. We've discussed everything from fall annuals to fall bulbs and lifting your summer bulbs. In this week's episode, we continue to answer your questions on fall lawn care and finish off the month with tips and tricks for bringing your tropical plants inside.

Some topics we cover in this week's podcast:

• Summer bulb care:
  • when to lift and store
  • How to store your summer bulbs
  • When to plant them out again
• Bringing in your tropical plants
  • When to do so
  • Methods to avoid bringing insects in with your plants
  • Keeping your tropicals over the winter - tips for feeding and watering

Stay tuned in October as Down The Garden Path focuses on the environment.

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, we look at how to extend your gardening season. We'll discuss everything from fall annuals to fall bulbs, lifting your summer bulbs, and bringing in your tropical plants. We'll answer your questions on fall lawn care, as well as provide tips and tricks on getting the most out of the fall season. In this week's episode, we take a look at fall annuals.

Some topics we cover in this week's podcast:

• Are my summer annuals still okay?
• Ways to revitalize your summer urns with some fall upgrades
• Perennials in your urns
• Do I need to feed my fall annuals?
• Fall annuals to consider: Mums, Asters, Purple Fountain Grass, Ornamental Peppers, Dusty Miller, Creeping Jenny, Ivy, Ornamental Cabbage and Kale
• Other fall perennial and shrub offerings your garden centers may have to offer, such as burning bush, deciduous holly, etc.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for our tips on lifting your tropical bulbs and bringing in your houseplants.

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 last Down the Garden Path podcast for August, we're closing out our series on trees. Each week this month, we've been talking about deciduous trees and upright evergreens. We covered Japanese Maples, Native Trees and spent an entire show answering listener questions about trees! On this week's episode, we discuss native tree care with David Ordanis of Ordanis Tree Care.

Some topics we cover in this week's podcast:

• Why plant native trees?
• What is their importance to the urban landscape?
• The differences between native and non-native invasive trees.
• Watering your trees properly: Young vs. older/established.
• How should you feed your trees?
• David's favourite native tree
• Native trees that David recommends

Find David on Facebook here.

We hope you'll join us next month on the Down The Garden Path podcast as we discuss ways to extend your gardening season.

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.

August is in full swing and we're well into exploring our latest topic on the Down the Garden Path podcast. This month, we're talking all about deciduous trees and upright evergreens. In this episode, we mixed it up a bit by opening the floor to our listeners. This special trees Q & A also marks the third anniversary of the release of Down the Garden Path as a podcast. We're so grateful to all our listeners. Thanks for joining us each week!

In addition to taking listeners' questions, we discuss All About Trees! A Webinar Series from Local Enhancement & Appreciation of Forests (LEAF).

Discover over 35 species of trees native to the Greater Toronto Area through this free four-part webinar series. Learn how to identify different tree species, their importance for urban wildlife, common urban stressors, and how to care for the trees in your community. A new species will be showcased each night:

• Small Deciduous Trees Tuesday, September 1, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
• Large Deciduous Trees Thursday, September 3, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
• Conifer Trees Tuesday, September 8, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
• Non-Native Trees Tuesday, September 10, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM

To learn more and register for this free webinar series, visit yourleaf.org.

Join us each week on Down The Garden Path, as 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.

It's week two of August and that means we're fresh into exploring a new topic on the Down the Garden Path podcast. Each week in August, we'll be talking all about deciduous trees and upright evergreens. On this week's episode, we're continuing our discussion with a natural beauty of every landscape, Japanese maples.

Some topics we cover in this week's podcast:

• Caring for Japanese maples
  • best time to fertilize and what products to use
  • how to prepare your Japanese maple for the cold winter months
  • tips for pruning
• Popular cultivars in the landscape: dwarf, weeping, uprights
• Joanne and Matt's favourite cultivars

Tune into the Down The Garden Path podcast each week in August for our discussions on deciduous and upright evergreens.

• 17th: Trees for Small Spaces
• 24th: Growing Trees

Join us each week on Down The Garden Path, as 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.

A new month means a new topic on the Down the Garden Path podcast. Each week in August, we'll be talking all about deciduous trees and upright evergreens. On this week's episode, we're kicking off the month with a pseudo-follow-up to our discussion on nativars with a look at native trees.

Joanne and Matt share their top five picks for deciduous and upright evergreens and why each made it to the list:

Matt's top five deciduous trees:

1. Flowering Dogwood
2. Hickory
3. Oak
4. Hackberry
5. American Beech

Joanne's top five deciduous trees:

1. Red Oak
2. Redbud
3. Serviceberry
4. Sugar Maple
5. Pagoda Dogwood

Matt's top five evergreen trees:

1. Thuja occidentalis "Skybound" and "North Pole"
2. White Pine
3. Eastern Hemlock
4. Jack Pine
5. Blue Spruce

Joanne's top five evergreen trees:

1. Thuja occidentalis
2. Hemlock
3. White Pine
4. White Spruce
5. White Fir

Tune into the Down The Garden Path podcast each week in August for our discussions on deciduous and upright evergreens.

• 10th: Japanese Maples
• 17th: Trees for Small Spaces
• 24th: Growing Trees

Join us each week on Down The Garden Path, as 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, we reach the end of our month-long discussion on deciduous and evergreen shrubs. Each week in July, we discussed a variety of shrub-related topics including how to prune your shrubs and new and noteworthy deciduous and evergreen shrubs. On this week's podcast, we continue the discussion about shrubs with a look at nativars.

Here are some of the topics we cover this week:

• What is a nativar?
• How are nativars produced?
• Substantial differences between cultivars and nativars and what to avoid:
  • Some attract and sustain the same populations as their native parent
  • Others do not attract as many pollinators as their native parent.
  • Some nativars do not have the same quantity or quality of pollen and nectar resources.
  • Avoid nativars whose leaf colour is different than its parent.
• Reasons for planting as close to the native species as possible.
• Some popular North American nativars you might find in your local garden center.

Tune in each Monday in August on the Down The Garden Path podcast as we shift our focus from growing deciduous and evergreen shrubs to trees. Join us on August 3rd for our first episode featuring native trees.

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. You can follow Joanne on Facebook and Instagram for daily inspiration for your home's landscape and garden all year long.

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, we continue our discussion on deciduous and evergreen shrubs. Join us each week in July as we discuss native shrubs, when and how to prune, and new and noteworthy deciduous and evergreen shrubs. On this week's podcast, we continue the discussion about shrubs with a look at new shrub introductions for 2020.

Here are some of the topics we cover this week:

• New shrub introductions from multiple sources
• New shrubs Matt and Joanne are excited about
• Testing requirements for new shrubs throughout North America
• Garden centre expectations for the distribution of new shrubs
• Predictions for shrub and perennial of the year for 2021

Tune into the Down The Garden Path podcast each week in July for our discussions on deciduous and evergreen shrubs. Join us for our last episode on shrubs on June 27th as we discuss native shrubs.

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. You can follow Joanne on Facebook and Instagram for daily inspiration for your home's landscape and garden all year long.

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.