8th Annual free Butterfly Festival June 25

In 2016, volunteers from Friends of the Garden and Master Gardeners of Greene County are partnering to offer two great events on the same day, in the same park.

“Young Sprouts in the Garden” is a free event which offers hands-on gardening adventures for children. This year Young Sprouts will join the line-up of activities at the 8th Annual Butterfly Festival.

This combined event will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, June 25, at Springfield Botanical Gardens at Nathanael Greene / Close Memorial Park, 2400 S. Scenic Ave., Springfield. The entire event is free and open to the public.

In addition to the gardening activities, there will be face painting, balloon art, children’s crafts, a caterpillar and pollinator costume contest at 10 a.m., metamorphosis crawl, and a caterpillar petting zoo and a pollinator parade through the Butterfly Festival.

The Fishin’ Magicians, Amy Short and Steve Craig, will perform on the grounds and doing two programs (at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.) inside the Springfield-Greene County Botanical Center. The Springfield-Greene County Library District will host three different storytimes (at 9:30 a.m., 12:15 p.m. and 2:15 p.m.) inside the Botanical Center.

Two free gardening workshops for adults will be held in the Workshop Studio inside the Botanical Center. At 10 a.m., Master Gardener Renae Bernskoetter will present “The Good, the Bad and the Buzzy—Should you Swat, Spray or Leave Them?”

At 11 a.m., Master Gardener Rebecca Nickols will talk about creating a butterfly garden that will attract native Missouri butterflies. She will identify the butterflies you can expect as visitors and share her ideas on garden design

This fun for the whole family includes a variety of vendors selling wares to inspire your gardening lifestyle and to celebrate our native butterflies. Scheduled vendors include Homestead Iron, Peggy’s Flowers, Wickman’s Garden Village, Ozark Soul, Jim Rathert’s butterfly mugs, Let’s Make Face Painting and Cricket Wireless.

Learn more about this event, visit the Master Gardeners of Greene County online at http://mggreene.org or call the Master Gardener hotline at 417-874-2963. Information is available from Friends of the Garden at (417) 874-2952, Greene County Extension at (417) 881-8909 or by emailing youngsprouts@mggreene.org.