This week on Down The Garden Path, we speak with The Growing Season's Matt McFarland about landscape design.

Matt McFarland grew up in a Landscape household and after 32 years in horticulture, he still gets excited about plants. Matt's father Jack ran Glen Echo Landscaping and Blue Jay Landscaping for 20 years. He instilled in Matt a love of the outdoors and the elegance of working with rocks and plants.

Matt attended Humber College's Landscape Technician Program. Graduating top of his class, Matt ventured out and took over the family business. Currently, Matt consults, designs, and installs many of his creations. His design services are now being requested internationally.

Join us this week for our conversation with The Growing Season's Matt McFarland.

You'll learn more about Matt and the work he does:

• tiny gardens but quickly grew to involve landscape designs and installs of all shapes and sizes.
• Matt walks us through his design process: his garden designs start with a colour scheme, taking cues from the homeowner and from the house itself to create a wonderful plant palette for his clients.
• For designs and installations, Matt tries to get ahead of the trends and strives to give his clients unique designs with both interesting plants and other features.
• When asked why he believes homeowners should invest in a landscape designer, Matt used a great analogy: creating a successful landscape without a plan is like putting IKEA furniture together without the instructions.
• Matt's company The Growing Season is based in the Bolton/Caledon area and Oakville is the farthest west they will go.
• His radio show and podcast 'The Growing Season' can be found at SAUGA 960. It airs live Saturday mornings at 10 am with podcasts that can be found here.

You can visit Matt McFarland online here.

About Your Hosts

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.