Ontario Native Plant Gardens
What are Ontario Native Plants?
A native plant is any plant that is indigenous to a certain area. Ontario native plants are plants that have developed here, existed here for a long time, or occur naturally in the area. Native plants are more likely to establish quickly and stay healthy because they have evolved to thrive in the specific soil type and climate of the region.
Non-native plants are plants that arrived here thanks to human interaction – whether deliberate or accidental. Some of these plants don’t have natural predators in Ontario and out-compete native plants for resources. Plants that do this are considered invasive.
How Native Plants Help the Environment
Carbon Sequestration
The worlds forests and oceans are the lungs of the Earth. Just one tree can absorb 48 pounds of carbon dioxide every year and can release enough oxygen to support 2 people breathing. Plants consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, effectively storing the carbon in their biomass.
Some of the carbon can also be stored in the soil. This is a more permanent way to sequester carbon because the plant mass will eventually die and decompose, releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere. A good way to increase carbon storage in the soil is to use mycorrhizal fungi as an organic fertilizer for your plants. These fungi form a symbiotic relationship with root networks, providing plants with hard to access nutrients like nitrogen in exchange for carbon.
In recent decades, people have been obsessed with cultivating green lawns and turfgrass has become one of the most widespread irrigated crops. Unfortunately, turfgrasses are terrible at sequestering carbon because of their small biomass and shallow root systems.
Native plants are much more efficient at carbon sequestration. Some good native plants in Ontario to consider are big bluestem and yellow Indiangrass. These are tall ornamental grasses with extensive root systems and good compatibility with mycorrhizal fungi.
Habitat Conservation
Southern Ontario was once covered in dense deciduous forest, but thanks to human expansion, many of these woodlands have been cleared to make way for cities, farms, and urban sprawl. This loss of habitat results in a decrease in biodiversity in both plant and animal life. The declining populations of important wildlife species can be disastrous to the ecosystem. These species need native plants for shelter and food.
Take for example pollinators. Pollinators like bees, birds, and butterflies are responsible for pollinating flowers and food crops. According to the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), 35% of all food crops and 75% of the worlds flowering plants are reliant on bees for pollination.
You can easily build new habitats to support pollinators like bees by including lots of flowers in your native plant garden. As an added bonus, you can increase the yield of your urban farm by attracting pollinators.
Resource Conservation
The best part about native plant gardens is that they are low maintenance and won’t sap your resources. Once your native plants are established, they don’t need to be watered because they are already adapted to your climate. If you use a good organic transplanter with mycorrhizal fungi, the fungi establish colonies that provide plants with nutrients year after year without the need for regular synthetic fertilizer.
Lawn care is a huge resource sink. They need lots of water, synthetic fertilizers that seep into local water sources, and worst of all : mowing. Mowing your lawn can burn more fossil fuels in an hour than in the same time driving your car! Plus, you have to spend money maintaining your lawn mower. Add in the edge trimming and blowing clippings off the sidewalks, and now you have yourself a greenhouse gas disaster.
Your native plant garden will never need to be mowed. You will save money (and the environment) with every square foot of lawn that is replaced. Next time your mower breaks down, instead of buying a new one, forget about mowing your lawn and plant an Ontario native plant garden.
For more ways to reduce your carbon footprint, check out this artice on 9 ways to make your garden more eco-friendly!
How to Start a Native Plant Garden
Do you want to replace a turfgrass lawn or an existing garden with an Ontario native plant garden?
I’ve broken down the process of starting a new native plant garden into 4 easy steps:
- MAKE A PLAN – Design your garden based off of nature.
- PLANT TREES AND SHRUBS – Plant any larger trees, shrubs, and evergreens first.
- ADD MULCH – Sheet mulching creates a barrier to smother any weeds and provides your soil with lots of organic material.
- PLANT FLOWERS AND SMALL PLANTS – Finish by planting all your perennials, groundcovers, native grasses, and ferns.
1. Making a plan
A good plan can make any project a walk in the park. To make your plan for a native plant garden, you might want to actually take a walk in the park. Notice the way forests are built. A forest is so dense with trees and shrubs that it is difficult to walk through without a path. If you want a pond in your landscape, go down to the lake and notice what plants grow there. What plants grow on the shore? What plants grow in the water? Use the beauty you find in nature to design your garden.
Choose a colour theme. Choosing a colour theme establishes a mood and creates cohesiveness throughout the garden. You can use a few different colours, but don’t go overboard, too many colours creates an overcrowded and chaotic look. Think of using both colourful flowers and colourful leaves.
Vary plant height. Including small, medium, and large plants in the same bed creates depth to your garden. Find a clearing in a forest to see how plant height varies in nature. Create layers in your garden from canopy to groundcover.
Use repetition. Think of your entire yard as one cohesive ecosystem (that’s part of a much larger ecosystem). Some plants might stand out, but you should expect to see many of the same plants throughout a given environment. Don’t be afraid to use 40 or 50 of the same perennial throughout your garden.
If you’re having trouble finding Ontario native plants to use, scroll down to see a list of plants you can use.
2. Trees and shrubs
Start with your biggest trees and evergreens first. This gives you a better feel of the space in your garden. Once all the big trees are planted, move on to any dwarf trees. Finally, plant your shrubs and smaller woody plants.
Make sure to dig your holes about twice as wide as the rootball. This gives the trees lots of room for their roots to grow in the crucial weeks after transplanting. Backfill the hole with a mix of 1 part compost to 3 parts of the soil you removed. The rootball should sit a couple inches above ground level once the hole is backfilled.
3. Sheet mulching
Start by laying down a layer of recycled cardboard boxes. Make sure to remove any tape because it won’t decompose. Overlap the edges so that there are no gaps for weeds to poke through. The cardboard will smother any weeds, grass, or other unwanted plants. Cardboard is better than landscape fabric because it will decompose and add organic matter to the soil. Cut the cardboard so that it fits loosely around the base of your trees and shrubs.
Next you want to add a thick layer of organic materials around 2-5 inches deep. This could be anything from leaves, straw, grass clipping, compost, woodchips, bark, sawdust, or pine needles. Try to be creative and use recycled materials from your garden or household. Some tree removal companies will even drop off their tree mulch at your house for free.
The last layer is mulch to retain moisture, but we will add this once we are finished planting.
4. Flowers and more
Now it’s time to plant your flowers and other small plants. You can plant these directly in the organic material layer if it is thick enough. If your organic material layer is very bulky (like woodchips) you should add some compost or potting mix around your plants. If the plants are a bit taller, move the organic material aside and cut holes in the cardboard to plant them. I recommend using an organic fertilizer with mycorrhizal fungi to help with transplanting shock.
Finally, add your top mulch layer. I like to use undyed woodchips! Make sure not to overcrowd the base of your plants with mulch.
That’s it! If you follow these steps you can be the proud owner of an Ontario native plant garden in just one day!
What Plants are Native to Ontario?
If you need ideas for what plants to include in your garden, I’ve included some suggestions for woodland and wetland plants in the list below. Remember to do your research to find out the specific needs of a plant before including it in you native plant garden design.
There are way too many native plants in Ontario for me to list, but you can use the native plant encyclopedia from the Canadian Wildlife Federation to check if any plants you want to use are native.
Ontario Native Woodland Plants
Flowers
- Wood Anemone
- Heart-leaved Aster
- Large-leaved Aster
- Red Baneberry
- White Baneberry
- Large-Flowered Bellwort
- Bloodroot
- Bunchberry
- Blue Cohosh
- Wild Columbine
- Dutchman’s Breeches
- False Solomon’s-seal
- Star-flowered False Solomon’s-seal
- Heart-leaved Foamflower
- Wild Geranium
- Blue-stemmed Goldenrod
- Early Goldenrod
- Zigzag Goldenrod
- Wild Leek
- Wood Lily
- May-apple
- Canada Mayflower
- White Snakeroot
- Hairy Solomon’s Seal
- Running Strawberry Bush
- Woodland Sunflower
- White Trillium
- Yellow Trout-lily
- Common Blue Violet
- Yellow Violet
- Round-leaved Yellow Violet
- Sweet White Violet
- Canada Wild-ginger
- Wintergreen
Ferns
- Bracken Fern
- Christmas Fern
- Marginal Wood Fern
Grasses and Sedges
- Bottlebrush Grass
- Ebony Sedge
- Pennsylvania Sedge
- Stellate Sedge
Vines
- Partridge-berry
- Riverbank Grape
- Thicket Creeper
- Virginia Creeper
Small and Medium Shrubs
- Downy Arrowwood
- Northern Bush-honeysuckle
- Shrubby Cinquefoil
- Gray Dogwood
- Roundleaved Dogwood
- Canada Elderberry
- Red Elderberry
- Beaked Hazelnut
- Canada Fly Honeysuckle
- Creeping Juniper
- Ground Juniper
- Black Raspberry
- Purple-flowering Raspberry
- Wild Red Raspberry
- Saskatoon
- Low Serviceberry
- Round-leaved Serviceberry
- Common Snowberry
- Maple-leaf viburnum
- Canadian Yew
Large Shrubs and Small Trees
- Choke Cherry
- Pin Cherry
- Alternate-leaved Dogwood
- Cockspur Hawthorn
- Eastern Hop-hornbeam
- Canada Plum
- Eastern Redbud
- Downy Serviceberry
- Smooth Serviceberry
- Staghorn Sumac
- American Witch-hazel
Large Trees
- Trembling Aspen
- American Basswood
- American Beech
- Paper Birch
- Eastern Red Cedar
- Eastern White Cedar
- Wild Black Cherry
- Common Hackberry
- Eastern Hemlock
- Bitternut Hickory
- Shagbark Hickory
- Kentucky Coffee-tree
- Black Maple
- Freeman Maple
- Sugar Maple
- Black Oak
- Bur Oak
- Northern Red Oak
- White Oak
- Red Pine
- Eastern White Pine
- Sassafras
- White Spruce
- Tulip-tree
Ontario Native Wetland Plants
Flowers
- Canada Anemone
- Sharp-lobed Hepatica
- Jack-in-the-pulpit
- Fringed Loosestrife
- Early Meadow-rue
- Wild Blue Phlox
- Hooded Skullcap
- Narrow-leaved Spring Beauty
- Canada Violet
Ferns
- Bulblet Fern
- Cinnamon Fern
- Northern Maidenhair Fern
- Ostrich Fern
- Sensitive Fern
- Spinulose Wood Fern
Sedges
- Plantain-leaved Sedge
Vines
- Virgin’s-bower
Small and Medium Shrubs
- Black Chokeberry
- Highbush Cranberry
- Wild Black Currant
- Silky Dogwood
- Prickly Gooseberry
- Hobblebush
- Eastern Ninebark
- Spicebush
- Hardhack Spiraea
- Winterberry
- Wild-raisin
Large Shrubs and Small Trees
- Speckled Alder
- American Bladdernut
- Blue-beech
- Mountain Maple
- Nannyberry
- Bebb’s Willow
- Shining Willow
- Wooly Willow
Large Trees
- Large-tooth Aspen
- Yellow Birch
- Eastern Cottonwood
- Balsam Fir
- Red Maple
- Silver Maple
- Swamp White Oak
- Balsam Poplar
- Sycamore
- Tamarack
- Peach-leaved Willow
This entire list of plants have been found in the Credit River watershed in Southern Ontario. For more pictures and info about caring for these plants visit https://cvc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Woodland-Plants_Landscaping-WEB.pdf
Where to Buy Native Plants in Ontario
There are many options when it comes to buying native plants in Durham.
To buy plants online visit Ontario Native Plants : https://onplants.ca/
If you’d rather visit a nursery that specializes in native plants, check out Native Plants in Claremont : http://www.nativeplants.ca/
If you need some help planning your native plant garden, click the link to my calendar below and schedule a free consultation with me. I’d be happy to help you with designing your low maintenance, sustainable landscape and answer any other questions you have about native plants, urban farming, and sustainable systems!