Allen Centennial Garden Harvest Festival

Harvest Folk Festival

Join us on Saturday, September 26, 2026 between 12pm and 6pm to celebrate an abundant and diverse harvest! We’ll have live music, dancing, and storytelling alongside opportunities to learn about different harvest traditions from Dejope (Madison) and around the world. Free and open to the public!

The Harvest Festival focuses on making emotional connections to plants as part of the Garden’s annual theme, Illuminate the Garden. There will be opportunities for creating with plants, a seed swap, and more hands-on activities.

The harvest festival’s song, dance, and food celebrates the ongoing Kitchen Garden project which highlights crops, cuisines, and cultures including Indigenous, Chinese, and African Diasporic.

The harvest festival also features student research that focuses on the importance of harvest festivals to communities across the globe. Check out the schedule below!

College students looking at a poster board about tomatoes
Plants hanging from a line with tents and people strolling behind.
Stickers on top of a piece of paper and a quilt
Students in black outfits with white vests performing Indian dances
People gathered around a wooden cart with seeds on top
Pink and yellow lions performing on lawn
Lion dancers with costumes laid out in front of them on stage
Master Himmeli maker demonstrating making straw mobiles to children and adults
Visitors and volunteers watching flax be turned into usable fiber
Smiling student next to project board
Birchbark canoe on grass with students milling around behind
Artist demonstrating turning native plants into fiber
Black woman scooping collards into a tasting cup.
Taiko drumming group wearing red and black shirts each behind his or her own barrel-shaped drum.
Kids looking closely at a map next to marigold plants

Schedule of Events

Noon – Seed Swap Begins (contribute your own seeds at noon to have first pick!)

12:30 pm – Seed Swap Opens to the Public (continues while supplies last)

Noon – 2:00 pm – Outdoor lantern making for all ages

Noon – 5 pm – Wool carding and spinning

1:00 – 5:00 pm – Student fair with projects and presentations from UW–Madison students

1:00 pm – Madison Rueda student dance group

1:30 pm – Cooking demonstration by local chef and farmer Yusuf Bin-Rella

2:00 pm – Norden Haus students perform Scandinavian song and dance (in English Garden) followed by flower crowns

2:00 – 5:00 pm – Folk craft activities including quilting and a rosemaling demonstration by Tara Austin

2:00 – 5:00 pm – Cordage from native plants demonstration by Mitch Frank

3:00 pm – UW School of Bhangra traditional south Asian dance

3:30 pm – Elm Duo Klezmer strings group

3:00-5:00 pm – Ljusgren Candle Making with Alan Anderson

4:45 pm – Lion Dancers from the Zhong Yi Kung Fu Association in Madison

5:15 pm – Cooking demonstration by local chef Paul Tseng

*Schedule subject to change*

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get there?

Allen Centennial Garden is located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison at 620 Babcock Drive. We highly recommend taking public transportation to visit us. Numerous bus routes regularly stop within a few block of the Garden. MetroTransit recommends you plan your route using Google Maps. On the weekend, there is also free parking on campus. Lots 34, 36, and 40 are all near the Garden. More information is available at the University Transportation Services Website here: https://transportation.wisc.edu/campus-maps/

What is a seed swap? 

A seed swap is an opportunity to share and exchange seeds you’ve grown in your garden with friends and neighbors. We welcome you to bring seeds you’ve harvested from your garden to share at this year’s Harvest Festival Seed Swap and bring home seeds others have grown. Allen Centennial Garden will be contributing seeds as well, so there will be seeds for interested folks to take home, even if you don’t have seeds of your own to share.

Plan to get to the Festival early for the best selection. Those who come at noon with seeds to contribute to the event will have first pick of available seeds when the swap goes live at 12:30pm.

Will food be available? 

Babcock Dairy Store, located a few blocks away at 1605 Linden Dr., will be open on Saturday, October 4 from 11am until 4pm. They offer coffee, sandwiches, ice cream, and more.

Are accommodations available? 

We value inclusion and access for all participants and are pleased to provide reasonable accommodations for this event. Please call 608-576-2501 or email AllenCentennialGarden@wisc.edu to make a disability-related accommodation request. Reasonable effort will be made to support your request.

The 2026 Harvest Folk Festival is supported by a grant from the Brittingham Wisconsin Trust. Support also comes from Driftless Seed Supply and the Friends of Allen Centennial Garden. 

Additional event support comes from the following UW–Madison units:

  • Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures
  • Folklore Program
  • Department of German, Nordic, Slavic+
  • Center for Culture, History, and the Environment (Nelson Institute)
  • Freshman Interest Group program of the College of Letters and Science
  • Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture
  • Go Big Read Program
  • Norden Haus, GreenHouse, and Spark learning communities
  • American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program

Please reach out if you would like to learn more about sponsoring this event!