Nestled along central Lake Erie in the heart of Ontario’s Carolinian Forest Region, South Coast Gardens provides landscape design services and offers a selection of unusual trees, shrubs and perennials. Some of the plant material available for purchase and/or growing in the display gardens will be considered by some gardeners as more typical of the southeastern United States. Several are proving to be acceptably hardy at South Coast Gardens (USDA zone 6a/6b) and at other locations around the southern Great Lakes. These include cold hardy cultivars of Sweetbay Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana), Sweetgum (Liquidambar syraciflua), Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum), Alabama Snow-wreath (Neviusia alabamensis), Willow (Quercus phellos) and Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum). Mixed in are nearly 300 species and varieties of Rhododendrons and azaleas and a diversity of Magnolias. Also at South Coast Gardens are plants native to Ontario and eastern North America along with frost-hardy sub-tropical plants that are ideal for outdoor container gardening from late April until early November.
The nursery hosts garden beds where plant material is being grown to assess its cold hardiness and suitability to the climates of southern Ontario. Although some of gardens surrounding our home date to 2003, the first beds at the nursery were established in 2006 and have been expanding each year since then. Although the gardens are still young and many specimens are still in the process of getting firmly established, from the time the first Rhododendrons and Magnolias come into flower in late April until the Asters and Witch Hazel finish blooming in October, the gardens provide a myriad of colour and attract a wide assortment of butterflies and birds. Given that the owners are avid naturalists, as of April 2017, 226 species of birds have been seen from the property!