Rainbow City Gardens

The Green Teacher Gathering is this Wednesday and we’d love to see you there! Brought to you by Chicago Wilderness Alliance and located at Academy for Global Citizenship — we’ll be at the resource fair and Margo will be giving a talk in the morning session about garden education advocacy: “Evidence from the Field: Making the Case for Garden Education”
🌿 Calling all environmental educators, sustainability practitioners, and anyone curious about conservation education: registration is now open for the Green Teacher Gathering 2026. This is more than a conference— it’s a space to reconnect and get inspired.
This year’s theme, “Guided by Nature: Reconnect, Restore, Revolutionize—advancing nature-centered teaching for a sustainable future,” invites you to reimagine what learning can look like, no matter who your learners are.
With hands-on workshops and community-building sessions, you’ll leave empowered and equipped to bring environmental education to life.
📅 Wednesday, June 24, 2026, 8:30am-4pm CST
📍 Academy for Global Citizenship, Chicago
📝 Learn more and register: see link below!

At Crown Center we’ve been planting up our spring garden 🌱 When we transplant with kids we call it “a hole and a hill”— decide where you want your plant, make a little hill right next to the hole, drop in the plant and use that hill to fill in the gaps… and push down gently around the plant 🥰 Easy! Now that we’re past the last frost, anything can go in the garden. We’re so grateful for all of the gorgeous seedlings donated to our garden programs from 🥬

Thank you to the attendees of our Planting Your Salad Garden workshop at ! We covered why, what, when, where, and how to plant, with a focus on leafy greens and cool weather crops that can go in the ground *right now*! Gethsemane has an absolutely gorgeous selection of seedlings and participants created planter boxes with lettuce, dino kale, chard, and johnny jump up flowers 🌱 We also broadcasted seeds to start a bed of baby greens and added cilantro seeds as well 🥬 Sign up for our newsletter and you can get a digital copy of the information sheet we gave out in the class, which includes salad dressing recipes from The Cookbook! 🥗

We’re so excited to be back at ! Yesterday the youth had their first garden visit of the season. We explored the space with a sensory tour—smelling and tasting fresh lemon balm and spearmint—and learned about seed cycles. Youth also rolled up their sleeves to help w**d and plant milkw**d and other flower seeds. A wonderful day of hands-on learning and connection with nature! 🪏🌸 🌿

Join us for our next hands-on workshop in this **free** series at this Saturday 4/25 on Planting Your Salad Garden! 🥗🫜🥬🥕🥒🍅 Who doesn’t love a delicious salad? Even better when you can grow it yourself! Come learn easy tips for growing salad crops in both cool and warm weather. We’ll cover basic soil prep and garden design, optimal timing, direct sowing versus planting seedlings, maintenance recommendations, and harvest tips. We’ll do a live demo of transplanting companion plants, and you can try it out yourselves! This workshop welcomes beginners and gardeners of all levels. Bonus: we’ll share some lovely recipes for DIY salad dressing too. See you there!

🌳While we’re always doing our best to care for and honor the earth, it’s important to take a moment to focus on our intentions… there is always room to keep learning and to do even better 🌍💗 This is why garden education is the core of our work at Rainbow City Gardens— the learning curve for how to be a great environmental and community steward is always going up! We’re here to support your journey, and we are right there learning and growing with you 🌞 Feel free to sign up for our newsletter where we share program updates, partnership shoutouts, and gardening tips 🌱 Happy Earth Day today and every day!

We had a wonderful time with kids and parents at Chicago Youth Centers Bloom and Bond family event at Randolph Elementary 🌸 We planted a variety of beautiful pansies thanks to a generous donation by Gethsemane Garden Center!! Before we planted, the kids added Back to the Roots compost to the soil— great quality stuff! 💚(We are gonna need about a pallet of soil and compost in order to get this whole garden planted— we could really use an in-kind donation! 😇)