Classes & Events: 2023 In Review
We thought that 2022 was a great year for CGC classes and events…until we experienced 2023! It was definitely a year of growth and reinvention for us as we worked to tailor our classes and big events to our mission as well as the needs and wants of our evolving community.
The Plant Sale
For one last time, we held our hybrid online/in-person spring Plant Sale. The weather cooperated, and hundreds of you showed up to support our work with your plant purchases. Thank you! TPS as we’ve known it may be changing, but keep that first Saturday in May (5/4) marked on your calendar. We’ll be holding GrowFest—modeled on our Fall Native Plant Festival and featuring veggies, herbs, natives and pollinator-friendly perennials—that very same day. We hope you’ll join us!
The Fall Native Plant Festival
Our first Fall Native Plant Festival was a huge success, bringing more than 1,100 people to Hauck Botanic Gardens for plants, education and community. We invited all of our favorite local native plant growers to expand the diversity of plants we could offer and let people get to know these growers a little better. Thousands of plants were sold, bringing locally sourced native plants to Cincinnati residents at a scale that has never before happened in our region. From the live music and food trucks to the free educational sessions to the multitude of partners, vendors and native plants, we could not have been happier with how it turned out. Look for this to be an annual event on the first Saturday after Labor Day!
The CGC Holiday Weekend
Perhaps the biggest event makeover of 2023 happened with our Holiday Weekend. We brought back the Friday night open house, complete with baked treats, wine and live music, and we loved seeing so many of you there. Instead of a holiday market, we filled the days with classes and free events for all ages—and the response was fantastic! Like the Fall Native Plant Festival, this event will be back in 2024 on the first weekend in December.
Classes & Education
2023 was a busy year for us when it came to classes and education opportunities, even without the training programs like CGDT and Growing Our Teachers mentioned elsewhere in this report. We offered a whopping 79 one-off classes and events with almost 1,700 registrations!
We began teaching a low-cost monthly class focused on native plants.
We started a free, every-other-week virtual lunch and learn series, Botany Bistro, that explores botany from various angles.
We partnered with the Episcopal Retirement Services Center for Memory Support to offer Nurturing the Mind, a series of dementia-friendly classes that explored plants around the world.
We hosted Mary Kroner’s show “X Marks the Spot” not once, but twice.
We offered classes on gardening, preserving, food prep, soap and card making, bird watching, keeping bees and chickens, and more.
Some of our favorites will return in 2024 alongside new offerings we hope you’ll find interesting and exciting!
Outreach Programs
Offering onsite and offsite nature-based programs to local organizations is another opportunity for CGC staff to reach new communities and audiences. We program for scout troops, libraries, garden clubs, after-school programs, community groups and others throughout the year. In 2023, we participated in more than 50 such events ranging from Master Gardener and Master Rain Gardener trainings and library classes to the Kroger Wellness Festival and a CPS professional development day.
Looking Ahead
It’s only March, and already we’ve offered 21 classes and hosted two performances! As we get into the spring growing season, there are plenty more classes on the horizon. Planning for GrowFest, our reimagined spring event, is underway, and we’re looking forward to repeating and hopefully growing our Fall Native Plant Festival and the Holiday Weekend. Through it all, we’ll continue to strive to hear what you, our community, want and need from the CGC and to provide that in a way that aligns with our mission of building community through gardening, education and environmental stewardship.