Yard and Garden Workshops

Adding a beautiful rain garden to your yard can help protect local streams and reduce flooding. Learn how to assess your property for the best rain garden location and size, choose the right plants, and how to construct and maintain your rain garden.

What is climate change? Why and how is it affecting the world around us? How are we contributing to it and what can we do to slow it down? Learn all this along with some practical tips we can each use/apply in our homes and yards to slow down or even (if we all do our part) turn back climate change.

Learn how climate change is impacting soil & water resources, and what that means for local plants, wildlife, and people. We’ll share how our choices and actions at home, in the yard, and in the community can increase our resilience to a changing climate. Tips range from building healthy soil and conserving water to selecting the right plants. You can be a part of the solution, starting right at home!

This workshop will give you insight and tools for incorporating edible plants into your landscape. From annual veggies and herbs to perennial berries and fruit trees, we’ll discuss design tips, ways to build fertile soil, and how to conserve water while producing a harvest. You will also learn about native plants that feature edible fruit and nuts, and how to invite beneficial insects to your garden. You’ll walk away ready to assess your site and make a plan for a beautiful (and delicious) landscape!

Create healthy, low-maintenance landscapes that mimic nature! You’ll learn what you can do to prevent pollution, support beneficial wildlife, conserve water, and create a beautiful outdoor space for people, pets, and wildlife! This is a shorter version of our 4-hour Naturescaping workshop.

Did you know that what you do at home and in your neighborhood can help improve the health of local waterways? After an introduction to the sources and effects of urban stormwater pollution, we’ll explore a variety of actions you can take to help slow the flow of rainwater and make every drop count for you, and for the environment! From lawn alternatives to de-paving, there are many ways to beautify your space and make a positive impact in your neighborhood and your watershed!

When it comes to attracting beneficial wildlife to an outdoor space, it’s all about food, water, and shelter. This workshop will provide a broad and brief overview of Naturescaping concepts, and then dive into simple and creative ideas for making your space a place where birds, butterflies, bugs, and more will want to come flocking. From plant shapes, colors, and bloom times to water features and tiny homes for bugs, you’ll find inventive ideas for attracting local wildlife to your space.

Find out about the many benefits of gardening with native plants! You’ll walk away with loads of information that will help you decide which native plants will work well in your yard. We will introduce you to common native plant communities in Portland, show examples of species that do well in similar growing conditions, and share successful planting tips that will help them thrive! A native plant slideshow will highlight characteristics and desired growing conditions of many local favorite native groundcovers, shrubs and trees.

Weeds – we all have them! Come learn how to identify the most common garden and landscape weeds, along with some of the other more notorious plant invaders of the region. We will walk you through how some of these aggressive plants take over in your yard, and how you can get the upper hand.

Join us for a hands-on workshop focused on effective weed removal using a variety of gardening tools. We will work with tools, such as trimmers, garden forks, pruners, and weed wrenches, to learn proper tool usage, safety tips, and how to choose the right tool for different types of weeds. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced gardener, this workshop will equip you with practical skills to tackle invasive plants more efficiently and confidently.