[Communications] Kick off summer in the Gardens with: Queer Gardens Film Screening, Tai Chi, The Glass House Workshop, Beekeeping and more

[Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance]

Email from Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance June 2025 Newsletter You are receiving this because you subscribe to our e-newsletter. June 2025 Connecting People to Nature on Chicago's West Side Exhibits Alfredo Ramos Martínez in the Artist's Garden July 2 through September 14 Step into the world of Alfredo Ramos Martínez, where nature and humanity intertwine in a vivid celebration of Mexican culture, beauty, and resilience. This exhibit showcases Martínez’s masterful depictions of indigenous life, rural landscapes, and floral symbolism, revealing his deep reverence for the natural world. Martínez used nature to show ideas like hope, strength, freedom, and pride. Enjoy this spectacular Summer Flower Show in the Artist's Garden with hundreds of Cala Lilies, Mexican petunias, Golden Globes and many more. Come celebrate the summer season! BOOK YOUR VISIT Sneak peek 👀 Mexican Flame Vine (Pseudogynoxys chenopodioides (syn. Senecio confusus), among many of the featured plants coming to the Summer Flower Show in the Artist's Garden later this summer. "Your Trash is Our Treasure" Teen Art Showcase: reuse & upcycle On display in the Community Room through June 30th Last month we hosted an opening reception for 6 local teens for their families, friends and community who participated in the Teen Art Showcase. The teens in the Youth Advisory Council, in partnership with the Urban Roots Teen Environmental Justice program, created an opportunity for teens around the city to come together through art and the environment by recycling and repurposing materials. This is truly a unique space created for teens, by teens to express themselves creatively through themes of sustainability and conservation. The goal is to offer this Teen Art Showcase annually in the spring and perhaps expand the focus to music, performance or more visual arts. Stay tuned for what the teens will cook up next year! Spring Member Drive - final stretch! Time spent in nature and connecting to community is more important than ever. We remain committed to making our 12-acre indoor and outdoor campus accessible to everyone and we need your help to grow our impact. If you haven't joined yet, now is the time! Be one of 510 new Family Members to help us reach our goal of $61,000 before June 30! Together, we can tune in to the power of nature equity and share that gift with others.  JOIN TODAY     Events & Programs   The Glass House: A Social Media Lab Saturday series June 7, 14, 21 $125 / $100 Members Want to tell even better stories and root your voice in nature? The Glass House is more than a social media workshop - it’s a creative lab set inside one of Chicago’s most stunning living museums. This 3-part series is part media training, part nature immersion, part content creation playground.  ‍Instructor: Esther Ikoro Esther is a digital storyteller and science communicator with a gift for making nature feel personal and media feel magical. With years of experience blending culture, science, and accessibility, her classes are practical, powerful, and people-centered. Save my spot!   Film Screening: Queer Gardening Wednesday, June 25, 6pm-8pm; free with RSVP Part of the visionary series Another World is Plantable!, this film invites us to rethink the stories we’ve inherited about nature—and who belongs in it. What does it mean to queer ecology? To garden as resistance? To reimagine care beyond bloodlines and binaries? Join us for a screening of Queer Gardening, a lush and layered documentary from filmmaker Ella von der Haide, who travels across North America meeting LGBTQIA2* gardeners transforming soil, space, and social systems. From forest communes in Tennessee to rooftop beds in New York, these gardeners share how queerness shapes their relationship with land, lineage, and liberation. Free with RSVP Outdoor Tai Chi Saturday, June 21; 10am-11am Saturday, June 28; 10am-11am $20 / $16 Members Move your body, quiet your mind, and come home to yourself with our new Tai Chi Classes with ZenFrankie and Ayanna from “Love Light and Kindness”. Whether you are brand new to Tai Chi or returning to your practice, this outdoor class offers a peaceful way to reconnect with your body and breathe in the gardens. Register for 6/21 Register for 6/28 Juneteenth Celebration Wednesday, June 18, 4pm-7pm; We are gathering as a community to celebrate African-American culture and the historical significance of Juneteenth. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn about the cultural heritage of Juneteenth through music, art and a vendor resource fair from local small businesses and organization. This event is free with reservations to the Conservatory. Please bring your own blanket or feel free to sit on the grass in the Conservatory’s outdoor City Garden. In the event of inclement weather, the event will move indoors. This event is included in your reservation to the Conservatory. If you are a Garfield Park resident please fill out the community interest form for more information about free add-ons! Community members can also register for a “Picnic Pack” meal. There will be a variety of vendors and organizations joining us this year and we look forward to showing out for local small businesses. If you are a local vendor or organization interested in being part of this event please fill out this interest form.  About Juneteenth: Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced to the more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state, they were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as “Juneteenth”.   Yoga with DuShaun Wednesday, June 11, 6pm-7pm; $5 DuShaun Branch Pollard has been practicing yoga for almost 13 years and fell in love with yoga because it allowed her to find peace of mind while moving her body. Come practice yoga with us and DuShaun in Horticulture Hall in front of the Fountain! All bodies and abilities are welcome. Yoga please   Hands-on Beekeeping Class Sunday, July 13; 2:30pm-3:30pm $30 / $24 Members We are offering hands-on beekeeping classes led by our head beekeeper and two teen beekeepers from the Urban Roots Teen Environmental Justice Program. This class is ripe for you if you are new to the world of beekeeping or just want to further your beekeeping management skills. Seasonal topics will include swarm management, making increases using your own bees, raising queens, disease prevention, treatments, honey harvests, feeding and overwintering.  Bees Please Save the Date! Music Under Glass 2025 Summer Series It's that time again - Music Under Glass summer concert series is upon us! Three unforgettable performances featuring talented artists from the West Side: Dreamer Isioma, Mykele Deville and Son Monarcas These summer performances are free and require registration. Donations are welcome. Stay tuned for more updates as we spotlight each artist and announce when registration goes live in July!    Ask a Master Gardener Saturday June 7 & June 21; 10:30am-1pm; Free 1st and 3rd Saturdays, there's a University of Illinois Extension Ask a Master Gardener table in Horticulture Hall to answer your plant questions. Make a reservation to visit them. Origami Open House Saturday, June 14; 12pm-3pm; Free On the 2nd Saturday of the month, Chicago Area Origami Society presents a drop-in Origami Open House. Free and fun activity for all ages and skill levels! Adults and kids accompanied by an adult are welcome. Free and open to the public. Registration is not required. If you’d like to visit the Conservatory before or after joining this program, please book a reservation.   Nature Education - Family & Youth Programs Urban Roots Spring Camping Trip Memories were made last month! The Urban Roots Teen Environmental Justice cohort had some fun in the sun at OWLS (Outdoor Wisconsin Leadership School). Highlights included learning how to build a fire and pitch a tent. The weekend was full of team building with trust activities with the low ropes course as everyone had to work collectively to solve problems. Other activities included fishing, archery and the fan favorite was the high ropes course. Overall, the teens shared they found some joy in being together and challenging themselves to try something new. Let's give it up for this incredible group of young leaders and nature champions! Family Programs are FREE and Drop-In every week Wild Wednesdays | Wednesdays, 4 - 7:30pm Explore nature through art, fun for kids and adults of all ages   Morning Glories | Fridays, 10am - 12:30pm Perfect for tiny nature explorers ages 0-3 and their caregivers   Budding Botanists | Saturdays 11am - 3pm (Sundays will resume in July) Hands-on experiments and nature discoveries packed with interactive fun and learning for young botanists of all ages Nature Education Theme for June is Pollinators Week 1: Beautiful Butterflies! June 4th (Wild Wednesday), June 6th (Morning Glories), and June 7th (Saturday Budding Botanist) We love our beautiful Butterfly friends and are so excited to see them flying around in gardens, seeking flowers to feed on as well as being a big helper as a pollinator! Inspired by their beauty, we will get to create colorful butterfly puppets and will be using those puppets to visit the flowers in Play and Grow! Week 2: Bees! Wild Wednesday is cancelled on Wednesday June 11th as well as Budding Botanist on June 14th. Programming will only happen on June 13th for Morning Glories.  On Friday, we will explore how bees may see the world, what kind of clues and messages they see in the environment and other organisms; particularly how flowers signal to bees in ways we cannot see. Week 3: Birds!   June 18th (Juneteenth Special Event Celebration!!) June 20th (Friday, Morning Glories), June 21th (Saturday, Budding Botanist) This week we will be venturing out into the wider outdoor gardens and searching for birds! We will practice our ID skills, but our focus will be on bird behavior and how they’re able to pollinate. Week 4: Bats! June 25th (Wild Wednesday), June 27th (Morning Glories), June 28th (Saturday Budding Botanist) Even though we often don’t see them in the garden, did you know that bats are another type of pollinator? This week we will unpack some of the misconceptions often held about these nighttime creatures and how they are an important pollinator to more than 530 flowering plants.  Family Nature Education Programs are made possible in part by The Dr. Scholl Foundation, Peoples Gas Community Fund and PNC Summer Teacher Night Wednesday July 16th Calling all teachers – join us for a special gathering to learn more about our programs and enjoy networking with dinner and drinks. Free with RSVP! We are inviting educators to: Network and learn about Field Trips at the Conservatory & Gardens Help us pilot a new Hibiscus workshop we are developing for future field trips Explore connecting to NGSS to our nature education curriculum Meet the talented and knowledgeable Urban Roots teen interns Learn about potential school partnership opportunities RSVP   Full Calendar Of Events OPEN WEDNESDAY FROM 10AM - 8PM ; THURSDAY- SUNDAY FROM 10AM - 5PM VISIT US | PHONE: 773.638.1766   COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS LET'S BE FRIENDS         VISIT GIVE VOLUNTEER RENTALS RESOURCE CENTER The Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance changes lives through the power of nature. We are a non-profit organization that works in partnership with the Chicago Park District. The Garfield Park Conservatory is owned and managed by the Chicago Park District and has showcased "landscape art under glass" for over 100 years on the West Side of Chicago.  Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance | 300 N. Central Park Ave. | Chicago, IL 60624 US Unsubscribe | Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice
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