Grow Me Instead - Promoting Invasive-free Gardening Across Ontario

Each year many new plants species are introduced for use in the horticulture trade due to low maintenance requirements and often, beautiful, showy flowers. Many of these species can become very problematic because they can escape gardens and enter natural areas where they outcompete native plants, lower biodiversity and can become extremely costly to remove. The Ontario Invasive Plant Council’s Grow Me Instead Guide, created by the Horticulture Outreach Collaborative, was created to assist gardeners in making informed decisions about the plants that they are buying for their gardens, helping to educate and avoid the use of invasive plants. This 1.5hr webinar outlined several problematic garden plants and suggest native alternative that are proven to non-invasive or native, easily found and widespread availability and have similar requirements, shape and garden uses as the invasive species. 00:00 Introduction and Grow Me Instead Guide 35:00 Guest Speaker - Claudette Sims, Halton Master Gardeners, Canadian Coalition for Invasive Plant Regulation 1:00:00 - Q&A