Southern Ontario Landscaping Ideas

Rock Gardens

• If there's one thing that Ontario has no lack of, it's rocks. The relatively thin post-glacial soil has left a lot of areas with exposed bedrock, known as the Canadian Shield. Over millennia, billions of pieces of the Canadian Shield have broken off and populated lakes, rivers, fields and forests. Use some of these rocks to your advantage by putting together a rock garden that combines beautiful plantings with the dramatic ruggedness of stone. Particularly on a sloping area, arrangements of stone can be both beautiful and useful, in that they help to discourage erosion.

Perennials

• Perennials grow well in the warming spring soils of Ontario, and they don't require replanting every year. Ottawa's Canadian Tulip Festival has become an international tourist draw every spring, highlighting the possibilities of bulb planting in this region. Perennials can serve as accents around house foundations, walks or driveways, or they can have entire garden plots dedicated to their colors. Perennials that do well in southern Ontario climate and soils include hostas, daffodils, foxglove, bleeding heart, bluebells and chrysanthemums.

Native Trees

• Trees are an asset to any property. Deciduous trees help to shade a house from the heat during the summer, then drop their leaves and let in the sunshine in the winter. They help to regulate the microclimate around the house. They can provide habitat and food for animals, and fruit and nuts for both animals and humans. All of this is in addition to their beautification of the property. Closely spaced, dense evergreens can demarcate property and provide privacy in the midst of the city, as well as shelter for small animals during heavy snow. Some native trees that thrive in Ontario include white pine, red maple, basswood, white birch and aspen.

Shrubs

• Shrubs are useful for filling out ground space in a landscape, and for obscuring and insulating foundation areas. You might plant shrubs around the base of a house as a backdrop for perennial gardens and between a front yard and a street or sidewalk as a delineation of a property. Low evergreen shrubs keep their needles year round, while deciduous shrubs drop their leaves and help to add compost to the soil. Some shrubs that grow well in Ontario include high bush cranberry, japonica and spirea.