Family Farmacy: Summer Solstice Soiree

Join us for a joyful Summer Solstice gathering as we celebrate the longest day of the year through storytelling, plant wisdom, and hands-on creative activities inspired by the sun.

Across cultures and generations, the solstice has been a time to honor the sun’s life-gving brilliance. Together, we’ll spend the day exploring how we can celebrate the sun through plants, rituals, and seasonal traditions.

We’ll begin by brewing refreshing sun teas and creating beautiful sun prints, using the power of sunlight itself as a creative collaborator. Join us to learn about plants that have long been associated with midsummer celebrations, including Calendula, Yarrow, and Saint John’s Wort.

Families will create:
☀️ Sun Teas infused with seasonal herbs and flowers
☀️ Botanical Sun Prints using light and plant materials
☀️ Saint John’s Wort & Calendula Oils inspired by traditional midsummer herbal practices
☀️ Yarrow Flower Essences to explore the energetic qualities of plants
☀️ Pressed Flower Sun Catchers that capture and reflect summer’s golden light
☀️ Sunflower Seedlings for families to take home or plant in our learning garden.

Along the way, we’ll share stories about the plants of summer, explore the many ways cultures have marked the solstice, and reflect on the relationships between sunlight, gardens, pollinators, and our own wellbeing.

Growing family wellness through plants and play.

Food is medicine—and the garden is our classroom! Through hands-on exploration across the Greenhouse & Education Center’s learning garden, greenhouse, and teaching kitchen, Family Farmacy invites families to learn together about how plants support healthy bodies, curious minds, and open hearts. Each week, families will engage in joyful, drop-in workshops where they can grow, make, and taste their way through seasonal lessons in gardening, herbalism, cooking, and plant-based arts. From crafting home remedies and harvesting herbs, to cooking garden-fresh meals and making nature-inspired art, children and caregivers alike will discover how to care for themselves, each other, and the earth.

Note: We very generously interpret family here at the greenhouse. We know that welcoming everyone of all ages makes us storng and vibrant. Elders, children, youth, young adults–everyone is welcome and appreciated. We know that caregivers come in many forms–chosen family, birth family, those who need the love of family are all welcome.

Workshops are rain or shine.

Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.

When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.

Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. A gender neutral bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to Mallory Craig at mcraig@thehort.org.