Nurseries respond to demand for native plants
by Jake Good
The Muskokan

Landscape contractor Robert Allen is not a fan of imported plant species in Muskoka.

He says they do more damage to the area than they are worth, which is why he is a keen proponent of getting people to go native.

Allen, of Northway Gardens Nursery, spoke about his passion for wild flora earlier this year at the Lake of Bays Heritage Foundation annual general meeting.

He said he hoped that the drive to replant native trees and shrubs in Muskoka, especially along shorelines, was not going to be the latest fad and that it was going to be here for good.

It was Allen's love and passion for Muskoka that led him to start explaining to his clients about the benefits of shoreline restoration and the detrimental effects big lawns and foreign plants were having on the environment.

"When I first started working up here I saw a lot of things going on that I didn't like," Allen explained. "Too many sites of new cottages were just being cleared with all the trees and plants being removed so that the owners could have an uninterrupted view of the lake."

"Eventually sites were nothing but bare soil and the only choice then was to sod or seed it and the native plants were lost for good."

Allen said that it was practices like this that led him to look at better ways of constructing new homes and landscaping.

"My background was in ornamental horticulture and although I had no formal training in ecology I could see that things were wrong."

"It was very hard to get people to think about native plants, and finding them for sale was even harder. It is only in the last five years that local nurseries have started to stock local species."

"The demand is growing and more and more species are becoming available."

It's not just deliberate introduction of foreign plants that can cause problems. Allen said bringing in topsoil or fin from other parts of the country can also have negative effects.

"It could contain the seeds of absolutely anything and everything," he said.

Allen said one of the easiest things to do if you are worried about your shoreline is to allow what is there to come back and learn what grows there.

"There's no reason to have ornamental plants here in Muskoka when we have so many great trees and shrubs already," he added. "If you really want to, having some ornamental plants is okay. Keep them near the deck or cottage and make sure they don't spread out into the wild. Close to shore the simple rule is keep it native."

"Taking plants from the wild is a bit iffy. They tend not to transplant that well. Early on in spring before the roots have spread out is possibly the best time. Getting them from nurseries is probably the best option and the range of plants available is getting better all the time."

To show what interesting plants Muskoka has to offer Allen brought in some species with imaginative names such as regal fern, turtle head and afterglow, to show the members of the lake of Bays Heritage Foundation.

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Northway Gardeners Ltd.
Muskoka, Ontario