Building community.
Nurturing nature.
Empowering action.
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Whether it’s a financial gift or a gift of supplies, we can’t do what we do without your support.
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Our volunteers are the lifeblood of the Civic Garden Center and the reason we can accomplish so much.
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We offer classes in everything from gardening to sustainability to cooking. What do you want to learn?
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From food to trees to native plants, growing and teaching others to grow is at the heart of what we do.
Upcoming Events
Kickstart your week with a trip to the garden and engage in seasonally relevant activities with the Lil’ Sprouts in your life! This free drop-in series for children ages 3 to 8 and their caregivers offers our youngest gardeners and nature lovers an opportunity to learn more about the natural world. We hold Lil' Sprouts on the second and fourth Monday of each month.
COST: Free!
Learn to protect and monitor monarchs, grow native milkweed, and supercharge your backyard habitat—just in time for fall planting!
Late August is a high-stakes window for breeding and migrating monarch populations. By understanding how you can best support this special species in your home, school, community, or public greenspace, you're helping to increase urban biodiversity, monitor local habitats, and helping to provide immediate, measurable lifelines for these endangered pollinators.
We'll begin the class with an overview of monarch conservation and local milkweed varieties, then explore a monarch monitoring and surveying method and community science projects. We hope you'll leave feeling excited and fully prepared to kickstart or enhance a productive pollinator habitat in your own yard!
INSTRUCTOR: Luis Aguilar-Dwyer (CGC Environmental Education Specialist)
COST: $20 / $15 for active CGC volunteers
We’ll be “bumping up” fall favorites like kale, spinach, collards, and broccoli that will be available at our Fall Native Plant Festival and distributed to our network of community gardens.
Every year, our green-thumb community gathers to feast on our garden-grown harvests. Gardeners bring homemade dishes crafted from crops they’ve nurtured, turning seasonal produce into a communal, farm-to-table experience right here at the CGC. If you’re part of our urban agriculture community, we hope you’ll join us!
COST: Free (registration required)
Our Fall Native Plant Festival is just around the corner on September 12, and we need your help to get the grounds ready for the party!
We'll be helping to weed, unload wood chips, and generally clean up the garden in preparation for the start of school.
The CGC and Sidestreams welcome you to the newly renovated Daryl Gordon Garden in Madisonville! Take a tour of this storied space, which includes row cropping, aquaponics, and live chickens. You'll learn how this garden was reactivated and once again turned into a part of Madisonville’s vibrant community.
This class will be held at the Daryl Gordon Community Garden: 6001 Chandler St, 45227.
COST: Free! (Donations welcome)
Learn to dye textiles using common plants!
In this beginner-friendly workshop, we'll explore botanical dyeing using native plants collected at the Civic Garden Center—many of which are likely in your own backyard! After a quick introduction and a demonstration, you'll use a bundle dye technique and an iron after-bath to make a botanically dyed tea towel to take home. While your creation is steaming, we'll discuss common dye plants so you can start your own botanical color journey. You'll leave with your hand-dyed tea towel and a handout that explains the process and lists favorite dye plants.
No prior dye or plant knowledge is required to participate.
INSTRUCTOR: Devan Horton
COST: $35
Every backyard and greenspace has the potential to serve as a critical rest stop for migratory birds. By understanding plant-bird relationships, we can provide the high-energy fuel birds need to survive their journeys. Whether you're a homeowner, community gardener, greenspace steward, or nature enthusiast looking to connect local plant choices with wildlife conservation, this class is for you.
INSTRUCTOR: Luis Aguilar-Dwyer (CGC Environmental Education Specialist)
COST: $20 / $15 for active CGC volunteers
Learn to be more in the present moment and reduce stress and anxiety with evidenced-based practices that create better health, foster more joy and creativity, and help us come closer to the reciprocity we have with nature.
We all need to have internal tools to help us build and maintain mind-body resilience and joy for our health and to share our best selves with the world. Many of us also yearn to feel closer to nature and better appreciate the reciprocity we share with it.
For both beginners and those wishing to refresh their skills, local mindfulness meditation teacher, author, and artist Cathy Sacco will explore nature-based mindfulness practices that can be incorporated into your everyday life. She'll also discuss stress physiology, the role of the senses, and the benefits of self-compassion and gratitude. You'll have the chance to experiment with guided meditation, gentle mindful movement, observation, and art in nature, and you'll learn how to build a home practice right for you.
INSTRUCTOR: Cathy Cebulski Sacco
COST: $25
Did you know that the CGC is host to seven different types of composting systems? Take a walk with us to learn about the different methods of composting we have and how you can incorporate composting into your life! You’ll see Earth Cubes, vermicompost, bokashi, Johnson-Su bioreactors, a three-bin system, a tumbler and a top-loading composter.
COST: Free!
Our Fall Native Plant Festival is just around the corner on September 12, and we need your help to get the grounds ready for the party!
Are you a native plant novice? Expert? Somewhere in between? Join us for the Fall Native Plant Festival! Whether you don’t know what a native plant is or have been growing them for years, this free, multi-vendor celebration of all things native plants is for you. We’ll have the “who’s who” of Cincinnati-area native plant growers as well as vendors, educational sessions, food trucks, a beer garden, live music, kids’ activities and more.
Have you checked out our Green Learning Station recently? We have rooftop gardens, a compost demonstration area, rainwater catchment systems and an indoor green wall, just to name a few of our current projects! Join us for an informative, informal tour and have your sustainability questions answered by Luis Aguilar-Dwyer, our Environmental Education Specialist.
COST: Free!