Join Patterson Park Community Garden as we celebrate our annual Roots and Wings Festival!

This family friendly event will combine all things nature, gardening and pollinators into a fun, educational and community building experience. Learn about bee keeping, hugelkultur, native plants and so much more while you mingle with neighbors and enjoy kids crafts, live music and a Monarch butterfly puppet show!

Discover the magic of nature with Urban Forest Explorers: Nature Play at APL!

Children can explore roots, mushrooms, rocks, fossils, and bugs through interactive, hands-on stations that inspire curiosity and learning.

This event is perfect for young nature enthusiasts to engage with the natural world in a playful and educational setting!

Join Central Texas Mycological Society & Ecology Action for an evening of family friendly, fungal fun as the Circle Acres Preserve in East Austin will be transformed into a Fluorescent Forest!

5-7pm: Come before dark for mushroom snacks, music, mushroom crafts, and a tree identification tour of the Healthy Soils, Healthy Trees community research project. Participate in hands-on demos to upcycle mushroom blocks at the Myco Research Station, and learn how to divert organic matter from the waste stream and turn it into valuable resources for your home and community.

7-8pm: Guided Tour of Fluorescent Forest & Glow in the Dark Bingo Explore the forest in a new light and discover the diverse, nocturnal ecosystem of the Circle Acres Preserve with UV flashlight to see glowing mushrooms, lichens, night pollinators, birds, insects, plants, and more. This family friendly event will highlight fungi's role in transforming a former dumpsite into a thriving urban forest. Learn how fungi are entangled in the forest helping plants gain water and nutrients, creating the pigments that give flowers their beautiful colors, and helping plants communicate with pollinators. We will have UV flashlights and a mothing set-up so we can attract and see the diverse, nocturnal ecosystem in a new light. Guests will learn how to look for, photograph and be community scientists in adding fluorescing organisms to the iNaturalist project.

We will have mushroom blocks for everyone to take home and upcycle. Mushroom snacks and warm Mush Love Tea provided. Get creative with glowing outfits, face paint and don't forget your camera and tripod.

Space is limited so to reserve tickets, RSVP here. Learn more here about how some plants, mushrooms, lichens and insects have evolved color patterns that are visible in the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic light spectrum, which humans cannot see but many insects, birds and animals can see.

Rain Date: Sun. Oct. 27th

Join us at the Hampton Branch for a morning of imaginative play! Designed for young learners, Imagination Station encourages learning through play. Discover the arts, practice your motor skills, and start your STEM exploration.

This month, learn about a variety of native pollinators, build a mushroom-based world-wide web, learn how trees carry water, learn to be a tree ID hero, and more!

Session 1: 10:00 - 10:45 am

Session 2: 11:00 - 11:45 am

Celebrate nature at our Windsor Park Branch during the Roots and Wings Festival with Urban Forest Explorers! There will be a booth at their Un-BEE-Lievable Pollinators Festival featuring interactive nature play where kids can discover the wonders of roots, mushrooms, rocks, fossils, and bugs. It’s a fun, hands-on experience that invites young adventurers to learn about the hidden treasures of the forest ecosystem!

Celebrate Over the Garden Wall at the Carver Library! We'll be doing crafts and activities centered around all the wonderful plants and critters in the show. Free mushroom blocks and seeds will be available while supplies last.

Join Red Salmon Arts/ Casa de Resistencia Books for a Roots & Wings Festival Event Series!

Oct. 5th, 8:30am-11:30am: "Café Librito & Garden Daze", a bilingual interactive program, where we will plant a mushroom trail on the land at Red Salmon Arts, watch a movie, and make mini zines! Together we will prepare the land, plants, and fungi for our UV night walk for "Cafe Librito: 2024 Dia de los Muertos Festival". No experience needed! Come learn with us! After planting, volunteers are welcome to our Cine Resistenica where we will watch a film about the intersection of pollinator plants, monarch butterflies, and Dia de los Muertos! Don't miss our mini zine workshop where we will create bilingual mini zines about fungi, native pollinators, and Dia De Los Muertos to inform our communities about the importance of pollinators and our cultural traditions!

October 26th 7pm- 9pm (Rain date: 11/2): "Cafe Librito: 2024 Dia de los Muertos Festival" Join us for an evening of honoring our ancestors and cultura! Bring the family to enjoy:

• live music food & drinks

• BIPOC vendor market

• bilingual kid’s storytime

• kid’s crafting

• guided fungi UV night walk with Central Texas Mycology

Guests will hand pick flowers from our very own Resistencia Community Garden. Together, the community will build an altar to our ancestors with cempasuchiles, mano de leon, and amaranth flowers.

Everyone is encouraged to leave pictures (copies) and offerings for their loved ones! Goodie bag giveaways include the books, “Papá's Magical Water-Jug Clock” and “Lotli”, native pollinator seed mixes, & cempasuchil flowers for family altars at home.

• 7:00pm: Opening Ceremony

  • Guests can bring their ofrendas for the altar andcut fresh flowers from garden for altar

  • Goodie Bag Giveaway: children books, native pollinator seed mixes, and zines

• 7:30pm: Kids Bilingual Storytime (inside) with Lotli Illustrated Book about the origin of the Monarch Butterfly & Papá's Magical Water-Jug Clock

• 8:00pm: Bilingual Fungi UV Night Walk guided by Central Texas Mycology Jesus Garcia

• 8:30pm: Open Mic poetry

• 9:00pm: Event Ends

Ongoing Activities!

• BIPOC Vendor Market

• Live Music

• Arts & Crafts Tables

• Making mariposa wings

• Making seed balls

• Painting paper mache skulls

November 2nd, 8:30am-11:30am: During Native American heritage month, our Native Roots program activities will center around The Three Sisters/Milpa, (currently growing in our Resistencia Community Garden). We will intertwine indigenous storytelling centering, celebrating corn, harvest songs, and craft corn husk dolls in partnership with Central Texas Cherokee Township!

Join us at Yarborough Branch for a morning of imaginative play! Designed for young learners, Imagination Station encourages learning through play. Discover the arts, practice your motor skills, and start your STEM exploration.

This month, learn about a variety of native pollinators, build a mushroom-based world-wide web, learn how trees carry water, learn to be a tree ID hero, and more!

Join the Bullock Museum for a pollinator-themed H-E-B Free First Sunday!

Enjoy FREE exhibition admission all day during H-E-B Free First Sundays, held the first Sunday of every month. Explore the Story of Texas through three floors of exhibitions that showcase and tell the history of artifacts from around the state!

Pollinator-themed activities are from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m, with so many things to do!

• Start your own Texas wildflower field by making pollinator-friendly seed balls with Zilker Botanical Garden

• Sample local honey, explore beekeeping equipment and see live bees up close in an observation hive with The Texas Beekeepers Association

• Learn about pollinator science and conservation with The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation • Make a pollinator-antenna headband and interact with beekeeping tools and bee products with Two Hives Honey

• Discover the connection between pollinators and plants through activities from the Wildflower Research Center

• Make a mushroom craft and learn about mushrooms in Texas, including the new state mushroom, the Texas Star Mushroom with Central Texas Mycology

• Learn about exploring nature in Austin with Whole Earth Provision Co.

• Join our friends at Girlstart for interactive STEM demos and hands-on activities for kids of all ages.

• At 11:30am & 12:30pm, come listen to pollinator-themed stories with Westbank Library

Celebrate nature at Dottie Jordan Park during the Roots and Wings Festival with Urban Forest Explorers! This event offers interactive nature play stations where kids can discover the wonders of roots, mushrooms, rocks, fossils, and bugs. It’s a fun, hands-on experience that invites young adventurers to learn about the hidden treasures of the forest ecosystem!