Allen Centennial Garden is excited to offer hands-on learning opportunities to deepen your relationship with plants! You don’t need to be a green thumb, but you can expect to improve your love of growing and working with plants. We think there is something here for you whether you like creating art with plants or touring our many different garden spaces for inspiration to take home. These events and tours support the Garden and embody our mission by providing opportunities for our visitors, interns, and staff to continue learning form the many beautiful spaces within ACG.
Starting on May 24, 2025 and on each following Saturday, we will be hosting a bevy of Saturday events which include our building your own bouquet ($10), drop in activities ($10+), tours ($5), and in-depth classes ($20+). All are great ways to meet and possibly work with countless seasonal flowers from our thousands of different plants.
Tours
Our drop-in public tours will be held:
- Saturday, May 24 at 11:30 am
- Saturday, June 28 at 11:30 am
- Saturday, July 25 at 11:30 am
- Sunday, August 3rd at 4:00 pm
Tours feature Allen Centennial Garden’s many diverse spaces and reveal the gardener sense behind each. Join the 45 – 60 minute tour for $5 per person. Tours will meet by the Southeast corner of the Agricultural Dean’s residence. Tours are free for Friends of Allen Centennial Garden members.
Build your own bouquet, also on Saturdays
May 24 to August 16 | 9:00 to 11:00 am – Seasonal flowers for nimble hands. Grown by our interns. $10 for as many flowers as you can grip.
Drop in projects
Drop in opportunities are bite-size versions of our favorite projects. Arrive anytime between 10:00 am and 11:30 am and create until 12:00 pm. We’ll have the supplies and a simple two to three minute primer. Create something with your young person. Available while supplies last. Project details and dates below.
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
Watercolors » May 31
Drop by to meet a few water color plants, grind flowers in our mortar and pestle, follow our project, or simply paint on watercolor paper. This project is a great way to test run early season water color plants, and if you just want to paint, a fun opportunity to unwind. $20
Floral greeting cards » June 14
Join us for a drop-in pressed flower buffet. We’ll have all the supplies to create thoughtful stationary, a few samples to kick start your imagination, and our presses on hand to show how to press flowers or how to make a simple DIY press at home. We love the cards since they encourage us to write more letters!
$10 gets you into the space and allows you to create three cards. Want to do more? It’s $5 per 3 cards after your first three. While this is a drop-in program, we have to start cleaning up at 12:00 pm. 3 cards may take between 15 and 30 minutes to create. New presses will be opened every 30 minutes.
Dyers Pot » June 28
This is our fun-sized way to check out plant based dyes. Create patterns with with rubber bands, toss the fabric in, and go for a 30 or 45 minute walk through our Garden. We’ll send you home with your completed project. (You are also welcome to pick it up later if you hope for a deeper color.)
Dye a UW Office of Sustainability tote bag or a 25” x 25” bandana each for $10. Or, kick it up a notch and upcycle a piece of apparel we thrifted because we knew it had a promising second life with a little help from a plant based dye. Apparel starts at $10 and is priced by weight since more fabric means more flowers.
Flower Pounding » July 12
Flower pounding is exactly what it sounds like and uses flowers, fruits, and leaves to create floral patterns in fabric. We love flower pounding because its easy to make remarkable patterns on your first try.
Meet, harvest, or simply smash flowers on a cotton bandana or small tote bag. Follow our pattern or seek your own flowery-pulpy vision. Kid friendly! $15
Indigo Massage Dying » July 19
Work with our bluest plants. Japanese Indigo Persicaria tinctoria, and Woad Isatis tinctoria are two plants that help dye fabric blue.
Many types of dyeing happen in a simmering pot, this project happens in a giant salad bowl! Using only salt, indigo, woad, and elbow grease, we’ll teach you how to work the color into fabric. This is the most fun way to make fabric (and hands) blue!
Dye a UW Office of Sustainability tote bag or a 25” x 25” bandana each for $10. Or, kick it up a notch and upcycle a piece of apparel we thrifted because we knew it had a promising second life with a little help from a plant based dye. Apparel starts at $10 and is priced by weight since more fabric means more plants. Have something with you you’d like to try this with? The cost will be $5 less than a similar type of apparel since you brought it in.
Dried Flower Creations » August 16
Join us for a drop-in dried flower buffet. We’ll have all the supplies to create like crazy, a few samples to kick start your imagination, and a guide to help with the tricky parts.
We’ll have many of the classics like strawflower, winged everlasting, and wheat on deck, plus a host more. We’ll have plenty of heavy duty wire, floral tape, floral wire, and hot glue guns. $20 gets you into the space and allows you to create the pictured wreath or another project of a similar same size. Want to make a bigger project? $10 doubles the size of your wreath!
While this is a drop-in program, we have to start clean up at 12:00 pm. It is not uncommon for a more elaborate project to take 90 minutes.
Sign up for a workshop ($25+)
Workshops introduce you to growing and working with the plants, demonstrate several different techniques, and provide you with time to unplug and create. To register for our 10:00 am to 12:00 pm workshops, follow the QR link to learn more about our Events and Workshops. Then, sign up on our Eventbrite. Designed for adults. Friends of Allen Centennial Garden Members receive a $5 discount to programs in this category. Project details and dates below.
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
Flower Pounding » June 7
Harvest, arrange, and hammer all the live-long day. Flower pounding is exactly what it sounds like, but there are plenty of ways to smash a flower. We’ll be smashing flowers, stems, and leaves from among our favorite color plants in the Garden while showing you ways to test new plants that have interesting shapes and textures. Whether you’re coming to get some strong feelings out or just want to create with flowers and hammers, this is fun and fantastic! We will walk you through all the creative steps.
Each participant will get 45” x 25”. Make an elaborate floral table runner or two bandanas. We teach you how to fix the colors, some of the best flowers to use and several different techniques. $25
Watercolors » June 21
We’ll teach the basics for extracting color, share the colors around the table, and get to painting.
We will harvest flowers and leaves, grind with mortar and pestle, add a dash of water, squeeze through muslin, and transfer to a watercolor palette. These simple steps yield remarkably vibrant colors that change throughout the season.
We will provide a brief tour showing some of the most ‘colorful’ plants and provide you the opportunity and tools to harvest and test your own. (Many of these are easy to grow reseeding annuals and perennials.) Then, we’ll turn you loose with watercolor paper. For those who are interested, we will lead a demonstration of resistance techniques used with water color. Either way, look forward to a relaxing time painting in a beautiful space. This is a 120 minute project. $25
Plant based dyes: intro » July 26
Come and dye with us! Come learn the joy and experimental process of working with natural plant based dyes. Interested in growing these plants? They’re easy to grow or forage. We’ll show you how! This year we’re excited to test out Madder, a classic dye plant known for making red.
As we experience the process, we will discuss the history of dyeing, the difference between plant and animal fibers, and the chemical process making your plant based dye permanent. This is a great introductory course because it works with different techniques for dye extraction and fabric preparation.
Everyone will get to take home 6 fat quarters of cotton (22” x 18”) and our handout which covers all the steps. Use the cotton for future projects like quilting or hem them into a napkin. This 120-minute project was designed for those aged 18 and up. $55
TBD » August 2
We’re leaving this date open for an apprentice to design a fun plant project.
Plant Based Sauces » August 9
Join us for an in-depth sauce making demonstration that teaches you how to make several fantastic sauces from common garden ingredients–tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillo!
Bottle the vegetable abundance that sometimes feels excessive in August and September. We’ll demonstrate options for breaking down four classic garden vegetables–tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillo! We’ll focus on making family sized batches of delicious condiments and highlight opportunities to simplify the process. Do you really want to blanch and skin all those tomatoes? Maybe, but maybe not. What about the peppers do I need to remove all the seeds or skins? All of the techniques, tricks, and tips we’ll be sharing can be adapted to many different recipes! To wrap things up, we’ll sample four sauces inspired by American BBQ, Japanese, Latine, and Indian cuisine.
This workshop is an in-depth deep dive into the plants, the cooking, the practical, and the tasting. Each participant will take home our garden-sauce makers’ flowchart, with the recipes we used for each sauce. This 120-minute project was designed for those aged 18 and up. $40
