In this week's episode of Down the Garden Path, Matt and Joanne welcome Joe Salemi, Deputy Executive Director of Ontario's premier horticultural trades association, Landscape Ontario. Joe shares the many opportunities a trade association like Landscape Ontario has for landscape professionals and addresses some of the issues currently facing the landscape industry.

About Joe Salemi

Joe is a people-first leader with over 18 years in the professional landscape industry, a career culminating in the observation of the challenges and barriers landscape horticulture business owners face daily. Joe has a combined background with trade association management and driving a vertical market software company. He is a sales leader and product specialist, with a high degree of marketing prowess who focuses on developing relationships for mutual benefit. Joe's passion is helping companies build efficiencies, increase capacity, and boost profits.

Don't miss Joanne and Matt's conversation with Joe Salemi from Landscape Ontario.

Some of the questions and topics covered:

• What is Landscape Ontario?
• What is the benefit to the customers of hiring Landscape Ontario members?
• How do you become a member of Landscape Ontario?
• Professional development opportunities, apprenticeship, and certification.
  • Skills Advance Ontario: second year, test pilot – www.growoutdoors.ca
• Labour crisis management
  • industry hiring hall concept
  • apprenticeship
  • foreign labour
• Landscape Ontario Congress, IPM symposium, and landscape designer's conference
• Covid-19 task force

Where to find Landscape Ontario:

• www.landscapeontario.com
• Facebook: Landscape Ontario
• Twitter: @green_for_life
• LinkedIn: Landscape Ontario
• YouTube: Landscape Ontario
• Instagram: @landscapeontario

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.