Down The Garden Path Podcast Joanne Shaw

This solo episode of Down the Garden Path is a bit of a rant!
Recently, I heard landscape design referred to as a luxury product, giving the illusion that only the wealthy need one. I disagree.
Despite the initial investment, I believe landscape design will save you money in both the short and the long run. And I am confident that after working with a landscape designer, your project will be even more successful.
Luxury or necessity? Tune in to hear Joanne discuss landscape design. Things to consider:
Your landscaping project most likely contains hardscaping (patio, walkway, garden walls) and softscaping elements (gardens, trees) and having both of these addressed from the start is crucial to a successful project.
In my opinion, no one should treat the softscaping as an afterthought and try to “fill” it in after the hardscaping features are completed.
Here’s a good example that I share in this episode:
A 2.5-foot-deep garden was left at the side of a pool for the large trees the pool clients wanted for privacy after the pool was installed. These clients called me for a planting plan to recommend the appropriate trees. Unfortunately, large trees have root balls that are 3-4 feet wide. There was no way the clients could get anything but small trees.
If a design had been done at the start of the project, the trees would have been put in earlier and the patio would have allowed for them, or the pool location would have been adjusted. 
Landscape designers, like interior designers, view the big picture and look at things from different perspectives. We consider things like the views from the windows, especially the kitchen sink. Our drawings are to scale, allowing you to visualize your outdoor living space to ensure that the patio will fit your table or your new furniture set.
We are also aware of how things grow. We have seen the home where a tree was planted in the “wrong” spot. Too close to a walkway, too close to the back gate so that it limits access, etc.
There have been so many times that I have been called in to help clients “after the fact,” and they all say, I wish we had a design to begin with. 
I firmly believe that having a landscape design that you approve ahead of time will help you spend your money wisely on the things that matter and ensure that your project is exactly what you want when it is complete.
Look for Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast.
You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca
Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses 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. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. 

This week on Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw welcomes author Alan Heeks to the podcast to discuss his self-help book, Natural Happiness: Use Organic Gardening Skills to Cultivate Yourself. 
About Alan Heeks
Alan Heeks is an inspiring guide to helping people cultivate their well-being through parallels with Nature. After a Harvard MBA and a successful career managing building materials businesses, Alan has spent 30 years creating nature-based learning venues, and leading groups there. In 1990, he started Magdalen Environmental Trust, converting 130 acres to a mixed organic farm. Since 1992 he has created Hazel Hill Wood as a 70-acre conservation wood and retreat centre. Alan has led many workshops with his Seven Seeds of Natural Happiness approach, including individuals, community groups, and NHS doctors. 
Here are some of the topics covered in this episode:
Natural Happiness can help you dig deep and stay cheerful in these stormy times. It shows how you can use gardening methods such as composting, mulching, and crop rotation to cultivate human nature, too. A gardener applies skills like observation, patience and creativity, and you can adapt them to deal with daily stresses and big issues such as climate change. Alan's approach is positive and practical, easy to use for gardeners and others. On the podcast and on YouTube, they talked about the interesting and practical exercises sprinkled throughout the book The Nourish Your Roots exercise suggests trying Tree Talk. Imagine yourself as a tree and consider whether all parts of you are in balance. The roots, the trunk and your branches. It is a practical and helpful exercise, especially when it encourages us to do some pruning! Another self-help “quickie” we discussed was how we handle compaction in our lives. Alan related it to the soil in a garden, which for gardeners is a very clear analogy. If our soil has good structure and is permeable then the air, heat, water, and nutrients can get in. The opposite is compaction. Many of us know how to handle compaction in the garden more than we know how to handle it in our lives. This book is full of these practical and thought-provoking exercises. With such chapters as "Use Natural Energy Sources," "Compost Your Troubles," "Cultivating Community" and "Growing Through Climate Change," you are in for a wonderful helpful book even if you are not a gardener. This book also inspires the child in all of us who remember drawing trees, climbing trees and playing outside. Whatever you might have going on in your life, Natural Happiness: Use Organic Gardening Skiles to Cultivate Yourself would be a wonderful addition to your bookshelf. Where you can find Alan Heeks:
Website: www.naturalhappiness.net Buy his book here. Sign up for Alan's free newsletter here. Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca
Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses 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. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

This week on Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw welcomes author Mariam Pirbhai to the podcast to discuss her creative nonfiction book, Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging.
About Mariam Pirbhai
Mariam was born in Pakistan and lived in England, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines before her family immigrated to Canada in the late 1980s. She completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of Montreal and received the Governor General’s Gold Medal. Mariam lives and works in Waterloo, where she enjoys photographing and painting the natural landscapes of southwestern Ontario. An English professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, Mariam also wrote the award-winning short story collection Outside People and Other Stories, and the novel titled Isolated Incident.
Here are some of the topics we covered in this episode:
Her journey through the landscapes of her life on her way to her current home How her travels in the past shaped the gardener she is now Her innate understanding of gardening meant that trees in the garden should produce fruit How her search for a fruiting mulberry tree proved challenging How the increased time spent in nature during the pandemic made her more aware of the plants in nature versus what we historically have been cultivating in our gardens Her deep dive into invasive plants What belongs and doesn’t belong in the garden The removal of a large amount of Buckthorn trees from the property How it opened up a new area for her garden to expand Where you can find Mariam Pirbhai:
Website: www.mariampirbhai.ca Instagram: @mariampirbhai Facebook: Mariam Pirbhai  Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca
Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses 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. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. 
In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing 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. Get your copy today on Amazon.
Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.

This week on Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw welcomes Julia Dimakos back to the podcast to discuss growing tomatoes. From starting tomatoes from seed to transplanting the seedlings into the garden, Julia shares her tried-and-true tricks to growing them successfully from seed. 
About Julia Dimakos
Julia Dimakos’ 7000 square foot kitchen garden is in Mono, Ontario, on 25 acres on the Niagara Escarpment. Julia has been growing vegetables and writing about gardening for over 13 years. She was twice published in Canadian Organic Grower magazine and became a published author in July 2022 with her first book, Tea Gardening for Beginners.
Here are some of the questions and topics covered in this episode:
How to start tomato seeds and the type of pots to use It's not too late during this first week of May to start as the seedlings are quite tough. You can put many seeds in a container: as they grow, they are easy to separate from the roots. The difference between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes It is important to know what variety you can and want to grow so you know how to support the plant in the garden appropriately. Spoiler alert: indeterminate tomatoes need support in the form of very TALL stakes! Julia shares some great tips on fertilizer and watering The importance of watering to avoid blossom end rot on your tomatoes Tune in and then go buy some seeds of an unusual variety of tomatoes! Click here to watch this episode on YouTube!
Where you can find Julia Dimakos:
Website: www.juliadimakos.com Instagram: @juliadimakos YouTube: @gardeninggirl  Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca
Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses 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. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. 
In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing 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. Get your copy today on Amazon.
Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.

In this episode of Down the Garden Path podcast, Joanne welcomes Katie Tamony of Monrovia Plants to dispel five myths about growing roses.
About Katie Tamony Katie’s official title is Chief Marketing Officer, but really, she is Monrovia's chief storyteller and trendspotter. She has more than 25 years of expertise in the lifestyle and leisure industries.
About Monrovia Inspired by the beauty of plants, gardens, and landscapes everywhere, Harry E. Rosedale, Sr. founded Monrovia in 1926 to be a premier grower of shrubs and trees. Monrovia collaborates with plant breeders worldwide to introduce improved plant varieties to North America. Monrovia plants flourish once planted to beautify gardens and landscapes. Visit Monrovia.com to learn more.
Here are some of the questions and topics covered in this episode:
Myth #1: Roses are too fussy. We discussed how when you give the roses what they need, they are not very fussy. Katie mentioned the Floribunda rose variety called Grace and Grit. It is a nice repeat bloomer that once established puts on a show. Available in White/Red/ Pink and Yellow. Myth #2: Roses are prone to diseases. The roses on the market now are much more disease-resistant than your grandmother’s roses. Monrovia’s Nitty Gritty™ is incredibly durable and disease-resistant. This ground cover series will look great in the garden or in a container. The double blooms are available in peach, yellow, red, pink and white. This rose is also self-cleaning so no need to trim or deadhead throughout the season. Myth#3: Roses are water hogs. This common myth boosts roses' reputation as being a difficult plant to grow. Roses actually like it hot and dry. Once established, roses do not need a lot of extra watering and can deal with the same amount as the rest of your garden. Myth #4: Roses are no longer frangrant. Well, the fragrance is back baby! This may have been true up until a few years ago but breeders have been working hard to bring the fragrance back in the new easy to grow varieties. Monrovia’s new Eau de Parfum rose collection features big romantic blooms that are easy to grow and very fragrant. Available in Berry, Bling, Blush and Bubbly. Myth #5: Roses don’t grow in my tough garden conditions. Several rose varieties bust this myth. As mentioned, Nitty Gritty™ and Grace N Grit are known for doing well in tough conditions. If you need an exceptionally hardy rose, then Monrovia’s Seaside Swirl Rose collection is just what you are looking for. A Rugosa rose variety that comes in pink, red and blush with the Rugosa toughness and exceptional fragrance. They are also tolerant of road salt but are more compact and tidy than the typical Rugosa rose. Maxing out at 3 ft tall. Find Monrovia online:
www.Monrovia.com Facebook: @monroviaplants Instagram: @monroviaplants Pinterest: @monroviaplants Twitter: @monroviaplants Find Down the Garden Path online: Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca
Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses 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. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In this episode of Down the Garden Path, landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses Hosta Virus X with returning guest Dawn Golloher from Gardens Plus.
Dawn Golloher is the owner-operator of Gardens Plus, an independent garden centre in Peterborough, Ontario, specializing in easy-care perennials. 
Here are some of the questions and topics covered in this episode:
Can you tell us more about Hosta Virus X? The virus was first discovered in 1996. It spreads from the sap in the hosta leaves and roots. The best way to protect your plants is to buy from reputable sources and to practice good hygiene when dividing or cleaning up hostas. Use disinfectant wipes or have a bottle of diluted bleach handy to spray down your tools and then wipe off. This would help many things from spreading throughout our gardens, including powdery mildew. Hosta Virus X doesn’t kill the hosta. It will just have mottled or blotchy colouring and the hostas may not thrive in the long run. It will also not spread to other perennials in your garden. The best way to remove an infected plant Three ways to recognize Hosta Virus X: ink bleeding mottled tissue collapsed tissue Gardens Plus is opening May 9th this year and will be open Thursday to Sunday until June 30th, 2024. Find Gardens Plus online:
www.GardensPlus.ca Facebook: @gardensplus Instagram: @gardensplus YouTube: @gardensplus Pinterest: @gardensplus Twitter: @gardensplus Find Down the Garden Path online: Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. You can also email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca
Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses 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. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. 
In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon.
Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.