During the early winter months, the colorful fall foliage we enjoyed just days before begins to find its way into our yards and lawns. For some, these leaves become an eyesore, but for the bugs that stay with us throughout the winter, they play a vital role. Why leave the leaves? As your gardens fade…
Category: Our Community
Return of the Whitaker Music Festival
A milestone summer kicks off with the long-awaited return of one of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s most beloved summer traditions.
Herbs of the Mediterranean
The St. Louis Herb Society Herb Sale returns to the Missouri Botanical Garden with a focus on Mediterranean herbs.
Plastic Pot Recycling: Update and Perspective
Missouri Botanical Garden has been tracking and supporting plastic pot recycling issues and options for many years. This spring, we regret to report that public plastic pot recycling will not resume. Wasn’t Plastic Pot Recycling “suspended” for 2020-21? Why is it being ended now? The collection program did not re-start as usual in spring 2020,…
A Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion at the Garden
One year ago this week, Missouri Botanical Garden President Dr. Peter Wyse Jackson shared the commitment of the Garden to create an inclusive and welcoming community within the Garden and the communities we serve and work in in order to further the mission of the Garden, “to discover and share knowledge about plants and their…
Green Living Festival | Sustainable — Useful — Fun! for 20 Years
We celebrate Earth Day every April 22. On a chilly September day in 2001, an Energy Festival in mid-town St. Louis anchored the other side of the year. One “green” event in spring, one in fall. For a while, that was it! On June 2, 3, and 4, 2021, the Green Living Festival carries this…
Dr. Peter Raven Recounts the Creation of the Japanese Garden
In his nearly 40 years as Missouri Botanical Garden President, Dr. Peter Raven oversaw a period of unprecedented growth, including the creation of some of the Garden’s most beloved areas — the Margaret Grigg Nanjing Friendship Garden (Chinese Garden), Blanke Boxwood Garden, and English Woodland Garden among them. In his autobiography Driven by Nature: A…
City Nature Challenge: Discover the Diversity of Nature in Your Neighborhood
In St. Louis, the Cardinals have thrown the first pitch of the season, the weather is heating up, and our local biodiversity is blooming, sprouting, and flying all around us. You’ve dusted off your baseball cap and enjoyed a picnic. Now it’s time to test your nature observation skills! We need you, community scientists, to…
Purple Martins Resume Seasonal Residence at the Garden
Perhaps you have seen them while visiting the Missouri Botanical Garden’s William T. Kemper Center for Home Gardening — large white, multi-compartment birdhouses on poles about 14 feet high. In spring and summer, the housing is fully occupied by purple martins (Progne subis), a swallow species. St. Louis today is possibly home to the largest…
The Plight of the Monarch and What You Can Do to Help
A welcome visitor to gardens, and sure sign summer is coming to an end when seen in large groups, monarch butterflies are a staple of St. Louis scenery and landscapes across the country. But their numbers are dwindling, scientists say. Shrinking Numbers and Endangered Status In July 2022, the International Union for Conservation of Nature,…
Dr. Anna Isabel Mulford: Botanical Groundbreaker
In 1895, Anna Isabel Mulford would become the first student—of any gender—to earn a PhD from Washington University.
In Praise of Parsley
As the St. Louis Herb Society prepares its first-ever online herb sale, the group sings the praises of parsley, its herb of the year. “My goal is to bring parsley back as a valued and important herb in cooking. It is too easily dismissed,” says Anne Cori, Herb Society member and owner of Kitchen Conservatory….