Invasive Plants in Your Gardens: Becoming More of a Critical Gardener

If you are a gardener, chances are you have cultivated an invasive plant species. You may not yet have learned that some of your favourite plants are invasive.  It’s a difficult fact to learn and to accept.  Connie Matthews-Cull joins the Kanata-March Horticultural Society’s May meeting to discuss the many considerations that today’s gardeners need to consider when choosing plants for their gardens.

Today, considering constant construction and monocropping, native species are being displaced at an alarming rate, it is surely time that gardeners in Ontario minimally understand what they are putting in their gardens, old ones and new ones alike, and to begin to make purchases and designs with knowledge that will support our ecosystem, not harm it.

This in-person meeting will be held at the Old Town Hall, 821 March Rd (laneway entrance for the Old Town Hall is on Klondike Rd, across from Shopper’s Drug Mart), 7:30 pm – 9 pm (doors open at 7:15 pm). Non-members are welcome for a visitor’s fee of $5 or become a member and enjoy our full 2026 program for $20.

Connie Matthews-Cull has been an avid gardener in Ottawa for thirty-five years, maintaining a city garden in Ottawa, and a country garden simultaneously for fifteen years. Now retired from a teaching career she spends all waking hours in the garden.  She is Past-President of the Eganville and Area Horticultural Society and Assistant District Director of the Upper Ottawa Valley River Basin, and Past OHA Assistant District Director of the Upper Ottawa Valley, District 2. Growing up with naturalists has made her very aware of her environment, but she was shocked to learn late in life that she, along with many others, has been responsible for spreading invasive species.