Ecological garden design and maintenance in beautiful
Prince Edward County, Ontario.
Services offered:
Native plant selection and design.
Garden maintenance without the use of pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, or carbon intensive machinery like leaf blowers.
Kill your lawn! Replace high maintenance, water dependent sod with low maintenance native plants with high ecological value.
Invasive plant removal and management.
“Jean is an attuned and sensitive plantsperson whose traditional and ecological knowledge informs her work as a gardener. It was a pleasure to work with someone who is interested in resilient plant communities, gardening humanely and who has a strong work ethic.”
— Michael Rose, of Michael Rose Gardens
Native Plant
Selection and Design
After assessing your site in terms of soil, sun, moisture, microclimate and intended use, I can help you select the best plants for your location. Choosing plants based on their suitability to location, rather than trying to alter a site to support specific plants, results in lower maintenance, less water usage, and higher plant survival rates in the long term.
Garden
Maintenance
I offer ecological garden maintenance in Prince Edward County, including weekly, biweekly or monthly visits, as well as spring and fall clean up. I also offer vegetable garden planning, planting and maintenance. I do not use carbon intensive, loud tools, such as leaf blowers or hedge trimmers. Inorganic and synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides will never be used.
Kill Your Lawn!
The majority of lawns are under utilized spaces that require high maintenance, huge amounts of water, chemical fertilizers and herbicides, and lawn mowers and line trimers with a heavy carbon footprint. They carry a large financial and environmental cost. Depending on your timeline, we can develop a cost effective solution to ‘killing your lawn’ and create ecologically beneficial spaces that suit your personal needs while also encouraging butterflies, bumblebees, dragonflies, hummingbirds and other beneficial pollinators, insects, birds and animals.
Invasive Plant
Removal and Management
Invasive plants are plants that are non-native, spread rapidly and harmful to local ecologies by dominating ecosystems and displacing native species. Some, like European buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) and Tartarian honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica), change the soil in ways that make it difficult for other plants to grow, choking out native shrubs and trees. Others, like dog-strangling vine (Cynanchum rossicum), confuse monarch butterflies who may lay eggs on the plant thinking it is a native milkweed. When the caterpillars hatch, they will then starve to death. Other common invasive species in PEC include garlic mustard (shown here), wild parsnip, phragmites, purple loosestrife, and Himalayan and Japanese knotweed.
In some cases, large scale eradication of an invasive species is not feasible. In these cases, long-term management strategies such as containment and calculated removal may be necessary.
“Jean is equal parts knowledgeable, reliable and hard working. Our gardens were built over a decade by the former owner, a landscape architect, and required considerable care and technical knowledge. The space currently serves as a wedding venue, and requires a gardener that is self-directed and capable of expertly managing the garden without guidance.
Jean fit this role perfectly.”
— Cameron Main, of Compass Rose Suites