Category Archives: Local Events

Image

Brews & Blooms Event with Grow Native! and Civil Life Brewing Company

The Grow Native! program of the Missouri Prairie Foundation will host its first Brews and Blooms native plant education event in partnership with Civil Life Brewing Co. at their South City brewery on Saturday, April 6 from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Grow Native! will be offering a free native plant giveaway (one per household, while supplies last), a container gardening demonstration, and gardening advice from St. Louis native plant and landscaping experts. Grow Native! merchandise will also be for sale, including native plant garden signs manufactured in Washington, Missouri.

Continue reading

Image

Learn About Naturescaping Your Yard for Blooms, Bugs, and Birds with MDC Webcast April 10 at Noon

Join MDC to learn about Naturescaping Your Yard for Blooms, Bugs, and Birds through the MDC Wild Webcast on April 10 at noon. Register in advance at mdc.webex.com/weblink/register/r9350abfe19cf8e5c13de93d5820f7b8f.

Spring is the time when many gardeners are digging in the dirt to prepare their landscapes for the coming growing season. Whether you have a big yard or just a bit of a porch or patio, you can attract butterflies and other good bugs along with birds through naturescaping with native blooms.

Planting native plants can help the garden grow by attracting native bees, birds, and butterflies as pollinators. And many fruit and vegetable plants produce better from pollination by some of Missouri’s hundreds of species of native bees and butterflies.

The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) invites anyone interested in gardening, landscaping, native plants, and native pollinators to join its free, online Wild Webcast on “Naturescaping Your Yard for Blooms, Bugs, and Birds” on Wednesday, April 10, from noon to 1 p.m.

Continue reading

Image

Farmers’ Table Wine Trail, April 6

The Missouri Department of Agriculture:  Enjoy the best of what Missouri has to offer. Meet the local farmers behind the food as you taste your way through six delectable wine and food pairings along the Hermann Wine Trail.

The event is Saturday, April 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are $35 per person.

Ticket price includes a souvenir wine glass. Price does not include transportation to wineries or additional wine tasting.

There are limited tickets are available. Advance purchase required.

2024 Farmers’ Table Wine Trail Tasting Menu:

Continue reading

Image

Mark Your Calendars: St. Louis Earth Day, April 20 – 21

The St. Louis Earth Day festival returns on April 20-21, 2024, located at the Muny Grounds in Forest Park. The event runs from 11 am – 5 pm both days.

From the Earth Day 365 website:

Whether you are coming for the food, the music, the activities, or the people watching, we PROMISE you will leave a little more inspired about real progress being made to preserve our planet and a little more connected to those on the front lines!

The St. Louis Earth Day Festival is a community tradition to learn about sustainable products and services offered by local businesses and organizations, meet local area non-profits that share Earth Day values, as well as showcasing local entertainment and local Green Dining Alliance restaurants.

For more information, visit https://earthday-365.org/festival/

Image

SEED STL First Plant Sale of 2024!

From the Seed STL website:

Seed STL hosts three seedling sales throughout the year. These sales are open to the general public and will include Seed St. Louis seed packets of varieties we recommend for the area, and merchandise.

All of the plant sales are held outside behind the Carriage House building at 3815 Bell Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63108. Cash, credit card, Google Pay and Apple Pay are accepted as payment.

Find more information about the March 9 sale HERE.

2024 Sales
March 9: March Sale (Potatoes, Onions, Strawberries, Asparagus, etc.)April 6: Spring Seedling Sale
May 11: Summer Seedling Sale
August 10: Fall Seedling Sale
October 5: Garlic Sale

Image

Free “Eco-Ed” Sessions: Webster Groves Hosts Events To Hype Sustainability & Green Awareness

The Sustainability “Eco-Ed” Series will feature a presentation on the book, Environmental Missouri, by Don Corrigan at the Webster Groves Public Library at 7 p.m., May 7.

by Don Corrigan

Volunteers with two city commissions are joining hands to provide Webster Groves area residents with some free “Eco-Ed.” The once-a-month ecology education sessions begin in March with energy efficiency and continue through October.

“Malachi Rein, director of Building Energy Exchange of St. Louis, is going to kick off the series with timely information about why and how to make buildings and residences more energy-efficient,” said Karen Anderson.

“This first session on sustainability is at the Webster Groves Public Library at 7 p.m. on March 5,” said Anderson. “A pillar of the sustainability concept is to save money, while reducing resources used for energy, food needs and so much more.”

Anderson is a member of the Sustainability Commission. Carrie Coyne is a member of the Green Space Advisory Commission. Coyne said not all the “Eco-Ed” sessions are inside. An April 17 event will be at 5:30 p.m. outdoors at Southwest Park.

Continue reading

Image

Mississippi River Work: Tribute to Environmentalists’ Hero Don Sweeney in St. Louis

Professor Jill Bracy from the University of Missouri-St. Louis knew Don Sweeney as a student, then as a mentor, then as a co-worker. She spoke about his excellence in teaching.

by Don Corrigan
Among the many accomplishments cited for the late Don Sweeney at his St. Louis tribute in January was his work with the Army Corps of Engineers. Sweeney became a whistleblower at the Corps over a proposed billion-dollar Mississippi River project.

Included in relics from that 2000 controversy, available at the Sweeney tribute, was a Time magazine cover story on the Corps’ Mississippi River project, which Sweeney opposed over the objections of his supervisors.

Stories inside the July 10, 2000 edition of Time magazine were packed with headlines, subheads, captions, and accounts of Sweeney’s opposition. Similar news accounts appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Washington Post.

One caption read: “Don Sweeney blew the whistle on wasted dollars and a ruined river.” A headline warned: “Mississippi Mud: The Army Corps of Engineers wants to build and dredge, no matter what.”

Continue reading

Image

Tiger-Lily To Visit Powder Valley Nature Center Starting Jan 23

The famous two-headed western rat snake, Tiger-Lily, will be at Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center in Kirkwood from Jan. 23 through the end of February.

Are two heads really better than one?  Visitors to the Missouri Department of Conservation’s (MDC) Powder Valley Nature Center in Kirkwood can soon find out.

Tiger-Lily, a two-headed western rat snake, (Pantherophis obsoletus), will arrive at Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center on Tuesday, Jan. 23.  The snake will remain there for visitors to see until the end of February.  From there, the two-headed snake will continue her journey around Missouri, staying temporarily at other MDC sites across the state.

Tiger-Lily is on loan from her home at the Shepherd of the Hills Conservation Center near Branson, which is currently closed for construction.

Western rat snakes are non-venomous and native to Missouri.  Tiger-Lily is actually a pair of conjoined identical snake twins that were never completely separated.  Such snakes are rarely seen in the wild, partly because snakes born this way have a low survival rate.

“Tiger-Lily” is the name given to the two-headed snake by the family who found this unique reptile in Stone County in 2017,” said MDC Interpretive Center Manager Alison Bleich. “The female snake was donated to the Shepherd of the Hills Conservation Center for display purposes. “Tiger-Lily is almost five feet long and has a healthy appetite,” according to Bleich, but she said that feeding time always presents a challenge.

Continue reading

Image

Powder Valley Nature Center presents An Evening with Raptors Jan. 26

Bird buffs, falcon fanciers, and anyone enraptured by raptors is invited to meet the objects of their admiration during this year’s An Evening with Raptors event.

The annual An Evening with Raptors hosted by the Missouri Department of Conservation’s (MDC) Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center returns this year on Friday, Jan. 26 from 7-9 p.m.  The event is free and is open to all ages.

It’s the ultimate partnership between man and bird.  Falconry is an ancient sport, and you can learn all about it at An Evening with Raptors event.  Falconry is the art of training raptors—birds of prey like hawks and falcons—to capture wild game, so that bird and trainer essentially become hunting partners. The use of falconry can be traced all the way back to 700 B.C.E., and perhaps even earlier.

“Several area falconers will gather to offer the rare chance to observe and learn about these fascinating feathered hunters,” said MDC Interim Nature Center Manager, Robyn Parker.  “They will also explain how viewers can get started in this age-old sport themselves,” she added.

Registration required. See below.

Continue reading

Image

Area Gears Up For Rare Solar Eclipse In April 2024

by Don Corrigan

Lots of “iffy” New Year’s predictions are being made for 2024. One sure bet prediction is that the sun will disappear on April 8, 2024. It will be the second solar eclipse for parts of Missouri in less than a decade.

Area astronomy clubs, school science programs and libraries have already got their sights set on a repeat of events that took place on Aug. 21, 2017. A highlight of that event was telescope viewing opportunities in St. Louis.

It’s not too early to start making plans. In fact, it may be too late if you want to get the full eclipse experience available in locales like Cape Girardeau or Carbondale, Illinois. Hotels and campsites are already posting “No Vacancy.”

Many in the St. Louis area will have a front row seat for a partial solar eclipse. There will be some amount of sky darkening, but there will be no corona and no totality, as in August 2017.

Continue reading