Joanne Young, Garden Coach
As far back as Joanne can remember, she has always had a passion for gardening and anything to do with nature and all that it has to teach her. It seemed like a natural fit after high school for Joanne to continue her education studying Horticulture at Niagara College and becoming a Horticultural Technician. It was here that the world of plants came to life and her love for gardening really ‘blossomed’ (pun intended).
For 32 years Joanne was employed at Mori Gardens in Niagara-on-the-Lake, as a Garden Designer and Consultant. Since the closing of Mori Gardens at the end of 2020, Joanne started her own business of Landscape Designing and Garden Coaching. Over the years, she completed well over 2,000 landscape designs of all sizes, for both commercial and residential properties. She loves talking with people about their gardens and helping them to make their dream gardens become a “growing” reality. She enjoys her many opportunities to teach seminars and lead workshops on various gardening topics. She loves to see both experienced and novice gardeners get excited about plants and start to see the possibilities that lie undiscovered in their own yards. Joanne also works part time with Sykes Landscaping as a designer and Horticulture Specialist.
In her spare time, you can catch Joanne out in her garden, trying to conquer bindweed – unsuccessfully so far, but there is always next year. For the past year, Joanne has also been writing a weekly garden column “Growing Together” in the Niagara-on-the-Lake newspaper – The Lake Report. She volunteers her time designing and helping to maintain gardens at a St. Catharines nursing home. She also loves to be out hiking in the great outdoors, capturing the beauty of nature on her camera. After her six-year term as President of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Horticultural Society, Joanne is now serving as Past President.
It is from these years of garden experiences and extensive plant knowledge that she comes to share with us.
“Fusion” gardening is one of the hottest trends in landscaping! Fusion landscaping is all about taking traditional approaches, like planting colourful native plants and flowers, enhancing your garden with lush foliage and organizing your garden layout and fusing them with a modern and innovative design to create a unique landscape design of hardscaping, textures and eco-friendly plant life. The result is an exciting and trendy landscape that reflects the way we live today and that is affordable, water preserving, and easy to maintain.