Ontario Plants
Berries, Vines, Bushes, and Edibles
We don’t have an infinite supply of many of these plants, especially the bushes – sometimes they to go people in lots, so people want just one or two lose out. This is especially true of the big bushes.
Kiwi Fruit – Actinidia Arguta / Kolomikta
Ripens fall; 2-4 years to produce; note variety, some require a male pollinator; Maturity: vines 15-40′ long, requires structure to support it. Plant 4-8′ apart; Full Sun; Z 5-8
Bored of grapes, but want a unique fruit that grows on vines? Northern kiwi fruit vines are super-hardy, tough versions of the kiwi vine, and they grow in the north. The kiwi fruit is originally from China, where there are hundreds of different kinds, and was at first called the Chinese Gooseberry when it was grown outside of China. In New Zealand, about 100 years ago, a variety with much larger fruit came to be called the Kiwi (for obvious marketing reasons).
The Canadian version of this hardy vine’s fruit is tart and sweet. It’s smaller than a commercial kiwi, so it packs all that flavour into a smaller package. The mature vines produce huge amounts of small, explosively delicious fruit. The vines are beautiful, too, with tightly packed leaves around red stems.
Be patient in the first year. After they’re established, kiwi vines grow very, very quickly – within a few years, they can cover a fence or overhanging trellis, even a wall. They can be trained to cover a barrier, as well, and can be pruned aggressively without damaging the plant.
These plants are both male and female; most require at least one male to fertilize the females, but one male vine can fertilize a number of females. You want to plant mostly females, with one male, and keep the male smaller, as it won’t produce fruit. You can sometimes plant several vines around an area with a male vine in the middle, more or less.
We grow two varieties: Arguta and Kolomikta:
Arguta is fast-growing, and can get to lengths of 50 feet or much more. They can handle cold, but the trick is the growing season – they need it to be pretty long, at least 5 solid warm months. The fruit tastes basically the same as a commercial kiwi fruit. One cultivar, Arguta “Issei”, is self-fertile, but it doesn’t produce quite as much fruit
Kolomikta is super cold-hardy, and the leaves turn a red-white-green colour in a few years. The fruit is a bit smaller, but it produces in large amounts. The vine will grow less. The usual length is about 30 feet, and then it just sort of stops and starts pumping out fruit and side-branches.
You MUST have something for the kiwis to climb. Their vines don’t develop strongly enough to support themselves, and they want to go up and up and up. Kiwi vines are the perfect vines for fences and borders and trellises.
Goji Berries- Licium Barbarum/ Chinese
Ripens fall, long harvest; some require a male pollinator; Maturity: 4-5′ tall, branches may droop. Plant 3 – 6′ apart; Full Sun; Z 4-8
Goji Berries are the miracle fruits of Japan, and the rest of Asia. Said to be so good for you they’re like delicious medicine, they’re exported in huge quantities as dried fruit, for high prices. The cheapest come from China, the highest quality from Japan. Happily, they’re very easy to grow.
We grow goji berries for the flavour, of course, though being healthy for you is not a bad thing.
The bushes have long canes, which will droop up as they climb, and can sometimes use support. They produce right into the fall, even the beginning of winter, and berries will appear long after you think the plant is done. If the birds don’t get them, you’ll be collecting berries into November and December.
They’re quite hardy and can tolerate various soil and climate conditions. Plant more than one for greater production. They do very well in good-sized colonies.
Five Flavor Berry Vine- Schisandra Chinensis
Magnolia Berry
Ripens fall; 2-4 years to produce; note variety, some require a male pollinator; Maturity: vines 20-40′ long, requires structure to support it. Best planted in bunches. Plant 4-8′ apart; Full Sun; Z 5-8
Called “Omicha” (오미자- “five flavours”) in Korea, the berry of this vine is among the most unique cultivated berry in the world. It’s used to make a delicious fermented drink in Korea (Omija tea/juice), but it’s also useful in everything else you can imagine berries being used for – jams, jellies, pies, even soups and more.
Its flavour is truly unique. It’s said to have all five “natural” flavours – salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and bitter – hence the name.
In China, it’s used as a medicine – “increasing resistance to disease and stress, increasing energy, and increasing physical performance and endurance, preventing early aging and increasing lifespan, normalizing blood sugar and pressure, rgery recovery, treating liver disease, preventing high cholesterol, stopping pneumonia, coughs, asthma, insomnia, irritability, PMS, diarrhea, night sweats, erectile dysfunction, deperssion, excessive urinatipn, and memory loss” – and it likely also toasts bread and helps make you happy, too.
But it’s a great addition to any natural garden. In any case, it’s delicious, and the vines produce lots of the berries once they develop. The vines are also attractive, and are good for crawling on frames, lattices, fences and trellises. It’s dioecious – it requires a male and female, but some are self-fertilizing, as are the ones we grow.
Rugosa Rose- Rosa Rugosa
Wild Rose
Flowers spring and summer, rosehips fall; Maturity: 3-5′ tall, around. Plant 4-8′ apart; Full Sun; Z 4-8
These plants come from Korea, and are native to the rest of Northeast Asia. The wild rose is, in fact, a form of food. The rosehips – the fruit that comes after the roses – are used to make jams, to flavour drinks and soups, and to generally use as culinary ingredients. They impart the flavour of rose to whatever they’re cooked into. They can even be used to make delicious teas.
Roses, raised as a flavourful alternative food source, were once a staple of Victorian gardens. The plants are big and bushy. They produce huge numbers of flowers at the beginning of the year, and keep producing them until the fall. They take an incredible amount of punishment, too – dry and wet, sandy or hard soil, bright sun or cloud. They sucker and spread easily, so they make gorgeous fence and barrier cover, but they can also go wild. They get about 6 feet tall, with thick canes (with thorns).
They love sunlight, and ideally should be in full sun. Don’t prune them aggressively, but after they flower, they can be encouraged to flower again by pruning back the dead flowers – “rejuvenating” the plant and getting it to produce more flowers. Always remember that if you prune the dead flowers, you won’t get the rosehips from it, though.
Wild Native Roses- Rosa sp.
Wild Rose
Ontario Native Plant
Flowers spring and summer, rosehips fall; Maturity: 3-5′ tall, around. Plant 4-8′ apart; Full Sun; Z 4-8
There are many native species of roses that grow in Ontario. These include Rossa Blanda, with few to no thorns, a very vigorous plant that’s also very showy and dramatic.
Like most wild roses everywhere else, Ontario wild roses make food. The rosehips – the fruit that comes after the roses – are particualrly good varieties of roses for making jams and adding rose flavour as a culinary ingredient. They impart the flavour of rose to whatever they’re cooked into. They can even be used to make delicious teas.
Roses, raised as a flavourful alternative food source, were once a staple of Victorian gardens.
Other roses include Rosa Palustris (swamp rose), which needs moist soil but can thrive in wet conditions, and Rosa Virginiana, or Virginina Rose, which loves dry conditions. In any case, all of the rose plants are usually big and bushy. They produce huge numbers of flowers at the beginning of the year, and keep producing them until the fall. They take an incredible amount of punishment, too – dry and wet, sandy or hard soil, bright sun or cloud. They sucker and spread easily, so they make gorgeous fence and barrier cover, but they can also go wild. They get about 6 feet tall, with thick canes (with thorns).
They love sunlight, and ideally should be in full sun. Don’t prune them aggressively, but after they flower, they can be encouraged to flower again by pruning back the dead flowers – “rejuvenating” the plant and getting it to produce more flowers. Always remember that if you prune the dead flowers, you won’t get the rosehips from it, though.
Rhubarb- Rheum Rhabarbarum
(many varieties)
Starts early spring, stems ready to crop late spring to mid summer; big leaves. Maturity: clump about 2′ tall, around. Plant 4-8′ apart; Full Sun; Z 3-7
Rhubarb isn’t a fruit, and most of the plant is toxic. But it’s still one of the most wonderful garden delectibles: the fresh stems are delicious. They have a tart, totally unique flavour, and are safe to eat. The stems can be cooked, or squeezed for their juice, and cooked into different concoctions. Jams made with rhubarb are irresistible and the best jams in the world.
We grow several varieties of rhubarb, all from seed, but the three we like are Victoria, Canada red and German. Victoria is a classic strain of rhubarb, developed in 1837, widely considered the best rhubarb, and the one everyone who is serious about rhubarb returns to. The stalks are thick and juicy, they’re not stringy, and the flavour has a slight hint of wine. Its history is a wonderful story:
The creator of this famous heirloom rhubarb was Joseph Myatt of Manor Farm in Deptford, England, a plant breeder who also created a slew of good strawberries, potatoes, peas, and more. Myatt’s ‘Victoria’ rhubarb was introduced in 1837 in honor of Queen Victoria, and in many ways, his rhubarb came to symbolize the dessert cookery of her reign: rhubarb charlottes, rhubarb fools (similar to a parfait), rhubarb compotes, rhubarb tarts, even rhubarb wine — none of which would have assumed their place in Victorian cookbooks had there been no ‘Victoria’ to cook with. Horticulturists have often claimed it was ‘Victoria’ that mainstreamed rhubarb cookery… “
Pick rhubarb with a very large, strong root ball and wait until the year after planting to harvest it. Take the new stalks before they get too big. Always leave some for the plant to grow.
Sunroot- Helianthus Tuberosus
Sunchoke, Jerusalem Artichoke
Ontario Native Plant
Vigorous grower. Maturity: clump about 3-6′ tall, suckers and spreads around. Plant 2-3′ apart; Full Sun; Z 3-7
The roots of this plant are something like a potato, but more delicious – you can eat them raw. Better, the roots will stay fresh in the ground for years (the plant is growing, after all) and you can harvest them when you feel like it. You can eat it like potatoes, or eat it raw, or just admire them as the wonders they are.
This plant is related to the sunflower. It grows easily, and takes little care, but it needs a lot of water – you can’t let it dry out. It wilts pretty fast without water.
It spreads through suckering, and can be weed-like, but a plant that produces food and creates a lot of it is not usually a problem. Either put it in a planting area with barriers, or you can do the “corral and crop” strategy.
This is the ideal tactic: leave a patch of it, and use that as a long-term larder. Don’t eat the roots in this patch unless necessary. As the plant spreads, as the plants that shoot up outside this reserve develop develop, dig these stray plants up and eat the roots. This way, the original patch continues to develop, and you get to eat the upstarts that try to escape. The beauty of this system is that the sunroot will just continue to generate food for you, year after year, without you needing to do anything.
Despite its name, it has nothing to do with Jerusalem, and tastes nothing like artichoke. It’s native to North America, but fell out of growing practice after the colonial period, when potatoes arrived from South America. Europeans took to growing it, however, and some thought it tasted like artichoke (it doesn’t, really). It was re-introduced to North America about 20 years ago.
It’s a great plant to have around, and it’s native to Ontario.
Strawberries
Vigorous grower, suckers, spreads. Maturity: from 1″ – 10″ tall, depending on variety. Can be planted close together. Most varieties Full Sun; Z 3-6
There are as many kinds of strawberries as there are seeds on the Earth, or something like that. We grow only a few varieties. We mostly try to grow only those that are “ever-bearing” – they bear fruit all season long. We also occasionally grow some rarer varieties, from places like Japan and Asia.
Eversweet
This is a super-hardy strawberry that spreads with energy and produces large, sweet fruit for the entire season. It’s one of the most commercially popular and is the most reliable.
Kent
Kent strawberry plants produce strawberries that are excellent for baking, for jams, and for other kitchen-y purposes. They’re also delicious, but the juice holds its flavour well, so they’re good for the kitchen.
Ozark Beauty
This plant produces some of the largest and sweetest berries, and produces them in huge quantities – often exhausting the plant. You need to give this one a bit of care, and in the first season, maybe pinch out some of the flowers to force it to put more energy into getting bigger before you get it producing tons of fruit. It’s ever-bearing, so you get strawberries all season long.
“Woodland Strawberry” – Fragaria Vesca
This hardy strawberry grows in forests, so it likes shade more than sun and spreads rapidly if it likes its environs. It flowers and fruits early, and then gets back to the business of spreading. Great patches of woodland strawberry are very attractive.
“Virginia Strawberry” – Fragaria Virginiana
Ontario Native Plant
Found along the edges of forests, this strawberry produces small, super-sweet fruit, and it makes for fantastic ground cover. Its roots help anchor the soil on hillsides. The flowers come in mid-summer and the fruit come not long after that.
This is one of the best native ground-cover plants to put in any landscape.
This plant will need some shade.
Raspberries- Rubus Species
Flowers depending on variety: Maturity: 3-5' long canes, can be trained. Plant min 3' apart: Full Sun: Z 3-6
What can you say about raspberries? Everyone loves them, they grow like weeds, the fruit comes from last year’s canes (so don’t cut them back until the third or fourth year), and they trellis wonderfully. No garden is complete without lots of raspberries.
We have a number of varieties. They’re all similar – they all need full sun, for example – but the fruits and behaviour can be slightly different.
A word of warning: raspberries can spread really, really, really… really fast. If the canes grow and fold down, and touch the ground, they root again. These delicious berry-producing plants are true survivors. It means they will likely outlive even you. If you let them ger away from you, good luck trying to control them.
When you choose them, you need to look for solid root system, and not measure the health of a plant by the height of existing stalks. They push up canes, and you want the root ball to be big and healthy, so that many more canes come.
A great way to use raspberries is in trellises, along walls and in back garden corners. Train them into shapes and lattices so that they can be easily managed.
Black Raspberry- Rubus Occidentalis
Ontario Native Plant.
Flowers spring and early summer Maturity: 3-5′ long canes in 3-5′ wide bushes, prolific. Plant carefully; Full Sun; Z 2-5
This is Ontario’s own native raspberry. It grows incredibly fast, and has a unique quality: It’s absurdly tough and strong. It’s one of the very few plants that can actually grow near Walnut trees. It loves the edges of forests, and even shady areas. The canes will grow, bend over, and then the tips that touch the ground will root again. This plant can form huge colonies that produce insane amounts of fruit, in the right season.
If you want lots of berries, this is for you, but it’s so well-adapted to Ontario’s climate and soils, you’re going to need to control it. One way is to train it up fences, trellises, and use it as a divider in the garden. You need to cut the canes back after two years, anyway, because the canes stop producing fruit, so there’s no need to worry about it becoming permanent. But putting the rootball in an enclosed area is – ahem – an extremely good idea. They’re tough and can survive almost anything. And this means they easily colonize. The canes have thorns, so they’re good as barriers and along walls. Unlike raspberries, Ontario’s black raspberry can handle shade, too.
The reward for planting black raspberries is the fruit, which is super sweet, packed with juicy goodness. If you’re going to plant raspberries, we can’t recommend the black raspberry enough. It’s a little bit of work, but the reward is great.
Highbush Blueberries- Vaccinium Corymbosum
Ripens, depends on variety; multiple varieties for best pollination. Maturity: 3-6′ tall, good hedges. Plant 3-4′ apart, acidic soil. Full Sun; Z 3/4 – 7
Blueberries are classic fruits. Mostly from North America, they’ve been extensively modified over time. Everyone loves them. What else should we say about them?
Most blueberry plants require full sun, and even if they don’t, if you want serious fruit, the more sun you give them, the better. They also like good drainage, but also good amounts of water. They can be picky, that way. In most gardens, they take up a lot of real estate because of this.
Planting more than one variety around is a good idea, because they produce more fruit.
The native Canadian version is the Lowbush Blueberry, the “wild blueberry”, which is related but not quite the same. It’s less dramatic, but is just as good a producer. It’s also less dominating and less difficult to look after.
If you want an alternative to blueberries, consider the Haskap. It produces similar fruit, but is a totally different plant, actually related to the honeysuckle, and it’s native to the entire polar region, circumpolar, found everywhere in the northern part of the northern hemisphere.
Lowbush Blueberry- Vaccinium Angustifolium
Also called “Wild Blueberry”
Native Ontario Plant
Ripens mid season; multiple plants for best pollination. Maturity: 2-4′ tall, good ground cover. Plant 2-4′ apart, acidic soil. Native; Full Sun; Z 2-7
This is the native Canadian version of the blueberry. It doesn’t get very high, hence the name, but it spreads, and it produces a vast amount of fruit when it’s happy. The leaves turn purple at the end of summer, and the fruit is small, super sweet and dark blue.
It’s also a tough species, and can take both long dry spells and heat. It comes back after forest fires, so it’s able to survive some pretty extreme conditions.
Ripening: Late summer
Currants- Ribes species
Golden Currant – Ribes Aureum
Ontario Native Plant
Hummingbirds and bees love the flowers, which produce yellow fruit that slowly turns purple and then black when it ripens. The leaves turn red in the fall.
NATIVE ONTARIO PLANT
Ripens late summer; multiple varieties for best pollination. Maturity: 3-4′ tall, good hedge. Plant 3-4′ apart. Native (or native-ish); Full Sun; Z 2-6
Currants are food staples, or should be. The tart, sweet berries develop on long threads and hang down from the bush in mid to late summer like irridescent jewels. Currant jam and currant juice are staples of many childhoods, and the berries can be purchased in high-end grocery stores, in season. For a lot of money.
This means, it’s much better for you to grow them on your own.
Currant bushes are easier to control than many berry bushes, and can be mostly left alone to do their thing, but if you’re using them as barriers (as in a fence), it’s a good idea to keep them trimmed.
The prices depend on the size of the bush.
Black Currants
Black currant bushes don’t get too terribly tall, but they can get pretty wide. The berries are rich and sweet, and have traditional uses in wine and for juice. They’re gerat to eat raw, of course.
White Pearl Currant
This is a unique variety of currant. Tart and sharp, the berries taste much the same as other currants, but much, much sweeter, and with a hint of tropical fruit flavours.
Red Currants
Astringent and sharp, the powerful taste of the bright red, almsot transclucent berries is unique and strong. The bush produces tons of berries, too, which can be eaten raw or made into spectacualr jam or juice.
Silverberry – Eleagna Commutata
Ripens late summer; multiple plants for best pollination. Maturity: 3-4′ tall, good hedge or specimen. Plant 3-4′ apart, or closer to let them grow together. Native; Full Sun; Z 2-5
Native to the far north and the colder parts of the province, the Silverberry is one of the greatest secrets of Ontario’s native plants. Its flavour is truly unique. It has essential fatty acids, extremely uncommon in the world of fruits, especially berries, and it has a “mealy”, dry, even grainy texture. It’s sour until it’s ripe, when the flavour changes and it becomes sweet and sour. The plant produces unbelievable quantities of the berries, too, when it’s mature, which takes about 3 years. Native Canadians fried the fruit in moose fat, used them to make wine, to make soups, candies, and even soap. They’re good for making perfumes and oils, too.
The berries make great – and truly unique – jam, both sweet and tart at the same time. They’re also good as juice, or fruit leather, to flavour yogurt or to eat dried. The seed is also edible, and has a fibre-like texture.
The plant’s bark itself can be used to make anything that needs tough fibres – blankets, ropes, fabrics, clothing – and this was one of its main purposes for native communities. You may not need silverberry bark blankets, but it’s neat to know you could make these if you needed to.
The bush grows in dry areas, on hills and in rocky areas, and it can deal with even the harshest weather. This is a super, duper, extra tough plant.
The bush is a spectacular ornamental plant, because it has brilliant silver foliage and a showy, graceful appearance. The bush grows from about 1 to 4 m tall, and about the same around. The plant does one more remarkable thing: its roots can fix nitrogen, so it literally improves the soil as it grows.
The Silverberry is related to the Russian Olive (Eleagna Angustifolia), which originally hails from eastern Europe and central Asia. It’s also related to the “Goumi Berry” , or”Cherry oleaster” (Eleagna Multiflora), which is found in North Asia, in China, Korea and Japan, and the Silverthorn berry (Eleagna Pungens), which is also from Asia.
While these plants produce delicious edible fruit, and are interesting on their own accounts, the Russian Olive isn’t native to Canada and is considered extremely invasive in Ontario, and should never be planted, under any circumstances, while the Goumi Berry is also not native. The Silverthorn is considered extremely invasive and should be eradicated wherever it’s found anywhere in North America.
Plant the Silverberry, instead. This is what you want.
Sea Buckthorn – Hippophae sp.
Ripens fall; some varieties need male for pollination. Maturity: 3-4′ tall, good hedge, thorny. Plant 3-4′ apart. Native (or native-ish); Full Sun; Z 2-5
One of the strangest, most rarely eaten and weirdly delicious of fruits in Ontario comes from the Sea Buckthorn plant. It’s native to North Asia and Europe, and so is only found in Ontario where it’s been introduced, but it’s an amazing plant, nonetheless. A tough, cold and salt-water tolerant plant, it (now) occurs across much of Canada. In coastal areas, it has been somewhat naturalized.
Long considered a serious health food, the flavour is something like a sour orange crossed with a mango. It’s unique, hard to describe, and wonderful. The juice naturally separates out into fats, a cream, and juice. These are used for different purposes, like baked good, cosmetics, jams, alcohol and juice. It has an almost endless list of important nutrients.
The plant is male and female; you need a male cultivar to pollinate a female. The bush grows very fast, can get up to 10 m tall(!). Its root system is good at stopping erosion along slopes and near riverbanks.
This is a genuinely unusual plant. It’s a tragedy that so few people get to taste its fruit. it’s quite a gift of nature.
Highbush Cranberry – Viburnum Trilobum
“Pembina” in Western Canada
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiples for best pollination. Maturity: 4-10′ tall, good hedge, specimen plant. Plant 3-4′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
This isn’t a true cranberry, but a Viburnum – a big, noble bush that provides big properties with excellent landscaping features. It’s a big bush, when fully mature – 3m tall by 3 m around.
This is the classic Canadian berry. It tastes much like a cranberry, and it can be used in the same way. The bushes tend to be prolific with their berries, too.
The bush grows very fast, if you give it full sun, but it can handle part shade.
Nannyberry – Viburnum Lentago
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiples for best pollination. Maturity: 4-8′ tall, good hedge, specimen plant. Plant 3-4′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
The Nannyberry bush is a huge, noble, gorgeous bush, perfect for landscaping. It sits upright, getting as high as 6 metres (if you let it), but with leaves all around. The berries are delicious, and taste like a spicy prune-banana – a prunanana, if you will, but with with a spicy zing. You’re supposed to eat it when it starts to dry out, and gets wrinkled. It’s one of the classic forager-fruits for Canadian wild living. City people rarely get to eat them, and they’re basically impossible to buy for any price. it’s best to just grow them yourself.
Northern Wild Raisin –
Viburnum Nudum v Cassinoides
Witherod, Appalachian Tea
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiples for best pollination. Maturity: 4-8′ tall, good hedge, specimen plant. Plant 3-4′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
Related to the Highbush Cranberry, this bush was extensively used for medicinal herbal remedies and other purposes, but the berries are also edible. The taste is unique, with a small amount of flesh around a big seed. It’s often made into jams or other preserves. Crushing the berries to strain out the juice is what’s easiest.
The berries provide a nice contrast with other kinds of berry – sweet, sour, tart, strong, a very unique flavour. They’re wild, as shown by the large seed and the small amount of berry flesh, but in exchange for this small amount of fruit on the berry, you get yumminess.
It grows to about 3m tall, if allowed to, and can tolerate almost any conditions. The bush isn’t self-fertile, and needs another individual nearby to pollinate. As a forest shrub, it can grow in part shade and will tolerate a good range of conditions.
Very rare, we have limited supplies of these shrubs each year.
Arrow Wood Berry – Viburnum Dentatum
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiples for best pollination. Maturity: 4-12′ tall, good hedge, specimen plant. Plant 3-4′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
A viburnum like the Highbush Cranberry, this bush grows to about 3m tall, if allowed to, and can tolerate almost any conditions. The berries are edible, and provide a nice contrast with other kinds of berry – sweet, sour, tart, strong, unlike the other berries in this group of species and with its own vital and unique flavour. It’s hard to describe. They’re wild, as shown by the large seed. It also means that they have to be pruned, or they get big – really big. It’s rare berry-bearing bushes like these that round out and complete an edibles garden.
The bush isn’t self-fertile, and needs another individual nearby to pollinate. It’s an attractive garden feature, and great for landscaping, too. As a forest shrub, it can grow in part shade and will tolerate a good range of conditions.
Very rare, we have limited supplies of these shrubs each year.
Red Chokeberry – Aronia arbutifolia
Ontario Native Plant
Don’t confuse with the Chokecherry – Prunus Virginiana
Ripens fall; multiples for best pollination. Maturity: 4-6′ tall, good specimen plant. Plant 3-4′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
Reaching two meters tall, this bush has leaves that turn bright red in the fall. Its berries stay on the bush into winter. They’re edible, if very sour and astringent when eaten raw, but they make truly spectacular jams and jellies, and you can make juice of out them. As a landscape plant, they’re beautiful.
Underappreciated and rare to find in a good foraging garden, these are good bushes to plant for something unusual.
Black Chokeberry – Aronia melanocarpa
Ontario Native Plant
Don’t confuse with the Chokecherry – Prunus Virginiana
Ripens fall; multiple plants for best pollination. Maturity: 3-6′ tall, same around; good hedge. Plant 3-5′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
A gorgeous landscape plant, great for barriers or in gardens, this native berry bush gets about half the height of a full-grown person, or maybe a bit more.
The fruit is too sharp to eat raw, but it’s known as a super-anti-oxidant for the health conscious, and it can be used in jams, recipes and in juices.
Spicebush – Lindera Benzoin
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiple plants for best pollination. Maturity: 4-10′ tall, same around; nice specimen plant. Plant 4-6′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
This bush is used by clever gardeners for really impressive spot-impressions, because it has pretty flowers in the spring and yellow foliage in the fall. But it’s not just a pretty plant. it also produces delicious, edible berries that can be used in all forms of cooking. The leaves and twigs can be boiled to make a delicious tea; but the real stunner is a;ways the berries. Nothing tastes like these berries. A cross between allspice and pepper, with heat, flowery goodness and spicy sharpness, the berries are great to dry and use in baking, in jams, in cooking, with meat or for any purpose, or to just eat fresh. They don’t keep well, so usually they’re dried, but they can also be frozen.
The taste is hard to describe, but once you use it, you’ll likely abandon many of the other spices you use. It’s an understory plant, so it tolerates a lot of shade, and it’s male and female. You should get a few of them if you want to get berries.
Canadian Serviceberry – Amelanchier Canadensis
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiple related Amelanchiers for best pollination. Maturity: 12-20′ tall, 10′ wide; spectacular specimen plant. Plant 5′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
The Serviceberry is one of the most storied fruits Canada offers. Used for thousands of years by native peoples, and adopted by Europeans in the early days of colonization, nothing speaks of fruit heritage like the Serviceberry. Closely related to the Saskatoonberry, its berries are the spectacular ingredient in classic jams, but are also fantastic when eaten raw.
This little guy can get over 10 metres tall and 8 metres wide, if you let it. It doesn’t get very thick trunks, but it can be very impressive, with lots of trunk-like branches. It’s basically a treeform shrub, or a shrubby tree. It’s one of the hardest, absolutely most difficult-to-kill Amelanchiers, and it will grow well if given light, water and basically decent growing conditions.
They make fantastic barriers ans landscape features, and have a beautiful mature form. You can even bonsai the bush, but this takes some dedication.
Eat the berries fresh, and use them to make a wonderful jam. Combining them with crabapples is a good way to enhance both.
Saskatoon Berry – Amelanchier Alnifolia
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiple plants for best pollination. Maturity: 8-10′ tall, same around; nice specimen plant. Plant 4-6′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
Named after the place, it’s actually native to most of Eastern and Central Canada. It produces copious amounts of its namesake fruit, and they’re eaten raw or made into jams and jellies and everything else you can do with delicious berries. Everyone who has a bush knows how delicious the berries are.
Like the Serviceberry (it’s related), a Saskatoonberry bush can get over 10 metres tall and 8 metres wide. It’s basically a shrub-like tree, though it takes some time to mature.
The berries are good to eat fresh, and make a wonderful jam. They’re a must-have for anyone with a yard and kids who get to tell their friends they have a Saskatoonberry bush.
Allegheny (Service) Berry – Amelanchier Laevis
Smooth Serviceberry
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiple plants for best pollination. Maturity: 8-16′ tall, same around; nice specimen plant. Plant 4-6′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
Related to the Service and Saskatoonberry, the Allegheny is a similar bush, but the fruit tastes slightly different. It rounds out a good collection of native berries. The fruit is red to dark purple, with an apple or pear texture (to which it’s related), mixed with blackberry or blueberry. Some people say they taste like blackberries or black currants. They’re very sweet, and a bit crisp (not watery). tart, with a strong flavour, and the berries can be quite memorable.
The bushes / trees can get over 12 metres tall and 10metres wide, one of the biggest Amelanchiers. It’s basically a shrub-like tree, though it takes some time to mature.
The berries are good to eat fresh, and make a wonderful jam.
Roundleaf Serviceberry – Amelanchier Sanguinea
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiple plants for best pollination. Maturity: 8-10′ tall, same around; nice specimen plant. Plant 4-6′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
Related to the other Amelanchiers, the Service, Saskatoonberry, and Allegheny, this bush has red twigs. It’s most similar to the Saskatoonberry, and the berries taste the same, but the differently-shaped leaves and the twig colour set it apart.
It’s very cold-tolerant, and the bushes / trees can get over 8 metres tall and 6 metres wide. With its red twigs, it looks wonderful even in winter.
Haskap – Lonicera Caerula
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens mid spring; multiple varieries for best pollination. Maturity: 6′ tall, same around;
spectacular specimen plant. Plant 4-6′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 2-6
Haskap is a very strange, but wonderful, honeysuckle-like plant found around the north pole, including well into Ontario; Southern Ontario is about as south in its circumpolar distribution as it reasonably gets. There are many varieties, or cultivars, but they’re all basically more or less the same. To detect the differences between the minor variations, you need to more or less be a Haskap expert. We grow a few, but they’re really very similar.
This is a hardy plant. I cannot stress enough: Winter Cannot Kill This Thing. It laughs at winter. Whatever temperature you think you can handle, say you’re a winter sports fanatic, this can go way below that. It’s the sub-arctic survivalist berry of choice.
The plant gets about 2m tall and is basically round, so about the same width.
Bad news: You need two of these, and not clones, because they need to cross-fertilize. Happily, we dislike cloning, and we like genetic diversity. We always have more than one kind on hand.
In Asia, these berries are used in many traditional medicines, but they’re also delicious.
Elderberries – Sambucus Canadensis / Pubens
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiple plants for best pollination. Maturity: 6-12′ tall, 6′ around. Plant 4-6′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
Elderberries are the fruit of yore. Really, “Yore” in this sense is meaningful: they’ve been cultivated for centuries. They crossed over to North America or were already here when Europeans arrived, both are possible, it’s not entirely clear which is the case. They seem native, and there are differebt varieties, but there’s almost no difference between these and the European varieties. It’s possible, given the migration of seeds in the bellies of birds and by other means, that they’ve been in North America for millennia.
They produce purple fruit that has a very unique and delicious taste, used to make wine and juice and even dyes. In England, elderberries were a common component of medieval diets.
They get big – 3 metres, sometimes monsters – unless you keep them small. They also like to form colonies, too, using suckers. You can end up with an elderberry forest.
We have two varieties : Canadensis, which has purple berries, and Pubens, which has red berries. Both are delicious, even if they taste somewhat different.
One warning: you shouldn’t eat the seeds. This makes eating elderberries somewhat complicated, … so you’re supposed to squish them for juice.
The juice is amazingly delicious, as is elderberry wine. Making elderberry wine is a nice traditional thing to do in winter.
Grapes – Vitus species
Ripens fall; 2-4 years to produce; Maturity: vines 15-30′ long, requires structure to support it. Plant 4-8′ apart; Full Sun; Z 5-9
There’s little we can tell you about grapes you likely don’t already know. They grow up things; their leaves are showy and dark; when they get big, their thick vines can cover houses and trellises; … and they make the king of fruits, the grape.
There are lots of varieties of grape, however. We have rootstock for a few of them, but very, very few plants of each. They’re hard to propagate and it’s intensely complex and specific to do it.
Grape Varieties
Niagara Grape
A delicious, sweet and sour grape made famous by its region of origin – the Niagara Peninsula – it’s a tough, cold-hardy grape vine that produces green (white) grapes that are usually seedless. This is one of the best and easiest grapes to grow, the fruit perfect for eating.
Concord Grape
The ultimate grape for eating, the concord is great in jams, because it’s super juicy and it has a perfect blend of sour and sweet. Most people get cravings just thinking about them.
Himrod Grape
Himrod grapes are green, meant for eating, and are usually seedless. They have slightly sour outer layers and super-sweet insides. They do really well in winter and are very hardy. They’re extremely popular in Southern Ontario, and the grapes fet snapped up when they hit the supermarkets.
Sovereign Coronation
A Canadian variety, developed for Canadian conditions. They’re bluish-purple and taste wonderful, super-sweet but also sour – a unique grape that can take winter and has a typically sour-sweet, mouth-watering Canadian flavour.
Freedonia Grape
Purple like Concord, they’re not as good for jams as Concord. Instead, these are sweeter, and many people like them better for eating.
Flame Grape
Light red, these red table grapes are similar to the varieties imported from places like California, but sweeter.
Vidal Grape
A French white grape with lots of sugar and a strong flavour, this is very popular for producing icewines in Niagara. They make great grapes for eating, too. These are not quite the grapes of France; they’ve been heavily adapted to local conditions and tastes.
Riverbank Grape – Vitis Riparia
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; 2-4 years to produce; note variety, some require a male pollinator; Maturity: vines 125-60 5-6′ long, requires structure to support it, be prepared to heavily prune. Plant 4-8′ apart; Full Sun; Z 5-8
This plant saved European grapes. As they were dying out from disease, the European grapes were grafted onto the Riverbank Grape (among others) to save them from extinction.
It’s clear why this was a good idea. Riverbank grape is a powerful grower – without other grapes grafted onto it, it climbs everything, even the tallest trees, wraps around everything. It can take blisteringly cold temperatures that destroy most other plants like this. It grows absolutely everywhere in Southern Ontario. When the Norse arrived in North America, more than a thousand years ago, they called it Vinland – because these grapes grew everywhere.
They grow very fast. You can get ridiculous growth out of them in even one year. They also love almost all conditions, even wet places other grapes won’t grow in.
The grapes are smaller, and have seeds, but they are intensely powerful in flavour, so much so that wineries won’t use them because the taste is so strong. They’re also both sweet and sour, at the same time. While some people think they’re too wild, others think they’re the most delicious grapes to eat.
These tough, delicious-fruiting and vigorous vines are fitting for Canada.
New Jersey Tea – Ceanothus Americanus
Maturity: 6′ tall, 4′ around. Can be planted in rows and groups. Native; Full Sun; Z 3-6
This is a plant with some history. In the colonial period, native North Americans taught settlers how to use this plant, which was used to make tea and medical cures. When the leaves are steeped, like tea, it makes a nice, refreshing caffeine-free drink, but you can also use it to lower blood pressure. The roots are usable in medicines, and the wintergreen-scented leaves are an ingredient in many herbal remedies.
There was a time when this was found in most Canadian and American gardens. It’s both beautiful and very useful.
Ground Cover Berries
These plants are also great ground cover plants, but they do produce berries.
BUNCHBERRY – Cornus Canadensis
Ripens fall; multiple plants make for a solid carpet. Maturity: 4″ tall, 4″ around. Plant in groups. Native; Partial Shade; Z 3-6
Ontario Native Plant
In a shady area, the bunchberry is the perfect ground cover plant. It gets about 15 cm tall, and eventually forms a wonderful wavy carpet. They’re fantastic in mass plantings.
A shade-loving native plant, the bunchberry was a common plant in Ontario’s forests until they were all cut down. If it finds a spot it likes, the bunchberry will spread out and cover as much as possible. They spread by runners. They like shade, but can grow in sun if they’re very wet, but they dislike boggy land.
The best thing is that they produce unique berries that make the most amazing jam. Their taste isn’t super special – not bad, not too intense – but they have incredible levels of natural pectin, so they can thicken things like jams and jellies and add substance to preserves. Since easier but less interesting fruit appeared from Europe, the Bunchberry has been almost forgotten, but this is a true natural gem in Ontario. No garden should be without bunchberries.
For urban gardens, Bunchberries are exceptionally hard to find. We put a lot of effort into these guys. They also reward planters, because once they develop big carpets in shady areas, they require little to no maintenance. They just do their thing – look beautiful, and make delicious berries at the end of the summer.
They need part shade to shade.
BEARBERRY – Arctostaphylos Uva-Ursi
Kinnikinick, Hog Cranberry
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; great carpet plant. Maturity: 4″ tall, spreads. Plant in groups. Native; Full Sun or partial shade; Z 3-6
A classic Canadian plant, the Bearberry gets its name honestly. Bears do, in fact, eat the berries. But it’s also beautiful, too – a wonderful evergreen ground cover plant. Even better, the berries are edible; Lots many can cause kidney failure in people with kidney problems, but the berry and leaves are used in herbal medicines. Mixed in with other berries, they add a lot of flavour to jams.
But the plant itself is also a bit of a marvel. They make great cover, and smell nice, and forest-y. They’re good for rock-gardens, too. Like Thyme, they’ll crawl all over everything.
Bearberries are super-tough. They can take full sun or partial shade, can take dry conditions, and are evergreen – green year-round. They do well on roadsides, beside driveways, along paths and in other places like this – and elsewhere where conditions are tough. They grow slowly, but surely. Best of all, they basically need you to do nothing but plant them and leave them alone.
TEABERRY – Gaultheria Procumbens
American Wintergreen, Canada Tea
Ontario Native Plant
Ripens fall; multiple plants make for a solid carpet. Maturity: 4″ tall, spreads around. Plant in groups. Native; Shade; Z 3-5
With its evergreen leaves, this wonderful winter cover spreads under trees. Its berries and leaves are edible, and have been used for hundreds of years for medical purposes. The leaves can be used to make tea, and when they’re fermented for three days, the essential oils can be extracted.
The leaves and little red berries have a strong mint or “spearmint” flavour, from the same spearmint chemical- methyl salicylate. The berries are actually dry capsules that last all winter, and they can be eaten (chewed) straight or used in cooking and tea. Traditional native societies used it for “headache, colds, stomachaches, increasing energy and breathing, and the oil was used topically for muscle aches, arthritis, and rheumatism.” Taken in large quantities, though, methyl salicylate is potentially toxic; it has to be a lot, but you can poison yourself. It’s not good for children or pregnant women.
This wonderful ground plant only spreads about 10 cm a year, but it’s very tenacious. It does, however, need shade.
