Classes & Events: 2025 In Review
By Mary Dudley, CGC Director of Education
The Civic Garden Center (CGC) unites people of all ages and backgrounds through gardening, education and environmental stewardship. Our educational philosophy is to provide accurate, place-based, engaging education that builds essential foundational knowledge for anyone who seeks to build a more resilient society through self-sufficiency, sustainability and collaboration.
CGC Education Overview
Our multifaceted approach reaches professionals, students, schools, community organizations and neighbors in every corner of our region. We offer tours, lectures, workshops, consultations and meaningful, education-based volunteer opportunities. We have educational opportunities designed for every age and skill level: from our Lil’ Sprouts to our Green Teens and continuing through adulthood. CGC staff members are also committed to their own ongoing professional development as we strive to maintain community relationships and relevance as leaders in reliable, friendly, accurate, timely education.
Our main areas of education include horticulture, urban agriculture and conservation. Within each of these areas, we build targeted programs that meet the needs of a diverse group of learners. No matter who you are, there's a place for you at the CGC!
“I just wanted to share with you the results of the houseplants course I took at CGC last year. All the plants are doing quite well! This is so much better than all the fake junk I had in this window prior to the course.”
Our Year in Education
In 2025, our small-but-mighty staff facilitated 582 educational programs reaching thousands of learners.
We kicked off the year with a series of training courses to prepare for the coming season: our Houseplant How-To series, Civic Gardener Development Training and Greenspace Guardians programming. Growing Our Teachers and Lil’ Sprouts sessions and Green Teens Challenge engagement carried over from 2024. We taught classes at the CGC and visited garden clubs and libraries to share the knowledge of seed starting, composting, rainwater harvesting and the importance of incorporating indigenous plants into the landscape.
As we moved into spring, we trained volunteers to support our Compost Kids field trips and Green Teens field studies, brought back our weekly volunteer events (like Friday morning Hands On at Hauck) and started practicum teaching in our community gardens and local greenspaces.
Summer brought another year of free HUB Garden classes in community gardens, two new cohorts of participants in our garden-based Summer Sprouts program and plenty of education-based volunteer workdays on our grounds, in community gardens, in local greenspaces and more. We also collaborated with La Soupe to offer an Improv Cooking series with produce from our onsite community garden and the Cincinnati Art Museum to offer Draw the Harvest as part of their Create Plus series.
As the growing season wound down, we shifted our focus to harvesting and preserving as well as caring for tools. We began a three-part series in partnership with Slow Food Cincinnati, ran our final class (Native Plants for Four Seasons) on December 9, then wrapped up a packed year of programming with our free Green Learning Station and Hauck Arboretum Tours plus our final Lil’ Sprouts session of 2025.
Numbers alone will never tell the complete story; the real results rest in the hearts of our partners, participants, volunteers and advocates.
“I just want you to know how much I enjoyed the presentation I attended, Julie. The time flew by—I was so surprised when you said it was nearing the end. You are an engaging speaker and shared very helpful and interesting information. It’s so clear you enjoy what you do. I will definitely sign up for classes in the future.”
Nurturing the Mind
Since 2023, we have partnered with Episcopal Retirement Services to offer a series of botanical-themed lectures paired with hands-on engagement for those living with dementia and their caregivers. During these sessions, participants are taken on a visual journey through domestic and international destinations, learning about the environments, conservation efforts and botanical wonders of places visited by our staff and volunteers. Frequently during these sessions, participants share their personal memories of living abroad or planting similar species of plants in their own gardens, building a community of shared experience. In 2025, we offered two six-session series for a total of 12 sessions.
“When I seek out community partners to host programs like Nurturing the Mind, a safe and comfortable space is paramount. The CGC is the dream. The staff have embraced the unpredictability that comes with serving people in varying stages of cognitive loss, and they’ve understood the powerful role that their facilitation plays in the cherished respite for the caregivers. Through their dedication and charm, they have developed a program that supports wellness, reduces stress and fosters connection—between individuals and nature as well as each other.”
GrowFest & FestEVE
In 2025, we trialed FestEVE, held the evening before GrowFest, as a way to bring the celebratory vibe back to our long-running spring plant sale. We sold out the event and then some, and many of the 150 ticket-holders showed up to hang out with us despite the wet weather.
To better align with our mission and program areas, we also shifted the GrowFest inventory even more toward edible crops and native plants. The rain kept coming, but so did crowds of shoppers, who did an excellent job of cleaning out our inventory of almost 8,000 plants. We shouldn’t have been surprised; after all, who better to appreciate the rain than a bunch of gardeners?
Fall Native Plant Festival
In early September, we hosted our Fall Native Plant Festival, which has grown to become the largest native plant celebration of the year in our area. More than 1,500 people stopped by to shop, learn, connect, listen to music and enjoy the wonderful atmosphere of the festival. This year’s event featured 12 native plant vendors in addition to the CGC, including two from the Columbus area. It’s our goal to provide the best selection of native plants to be found in the region.
Save the date: The 2026 festival will be on Saturday, September 12!
Membership
Near the end of 2025, we unveiled a totally revamped CGC membership experience that includes our new Native Plant Support Group and Herb Circle, Game Nights, the opportunity to register for early shopping for our GrowFest plant sale, surprise perks and more. Members enjoy these exclusive benefits while also helping to sustain the CGC’s work. Thirty-eight people had joined by the end of the first month alone!
Winter Open House
With the help of our volunteer planning committee, we welcomed our community to celebrate with us at our annual Winter Open House. It was wonderful to close out the year with so many new and familiar faces and to take a little time to enjoy one another’s company.
Looking Ahead
It is always our goal to respond to the needs of our community by listening, reviewing and revising our education accordingly. In 2026, we’ll continue to offer the wide variety of relevant classes and opportunities people have come to expect from the CGC. The Fall Native Plant Festival and Winter Open House will return, and we’ve expanded GrowFest to be a whole series of twelve classes on urban agriculture topics PLUS the spring plant sale you know and love!
We’re also building our horticulture education by offering a Horticulture Summer Camp for adults, and we’re expanding volunteer opportunities for our Market Garden Training and Greenspace Guardians programs at the CGC and our newly developed satellite sites around the Cincinnati region.
Finally, 2026 will feature the premiere of our new Hauck Concert Series, a four-part tribute to music, nature and community. We’re excited to collaborate with series curator Krista Cornish Scott, local music professionals and the vast student talent coming through CCM to offer an annual series of musical performances based around Hauck Botanic Garden and our mission to build community through gardening, education and environmental stewardship.