News from the EarthWays Center

Gardening to support butterflies and bees has adults and kids all over St. Louis in a nature-happy buzz. What fun to grow native plants and attract cool pollinators! But nature brings mosquitoes too. How can we control the insect pests without harming beneficial bugs? Take three key steps.

On June 20-22 an annual institute was held that allowed educators to explore sustainability in the context of their schools.

The Home Energy Score is a rating that can provide you with valuable information about your home and can even save you money!

The Sunflower+ Project: STL is in its fifth year. We began as a winning entry in the St. Louis Land Lab Design Competition – a way to re-think vacant, urban land as an asset rather than a liability. Fruitful collaboration is a large part of what keeps us going long after our two year project was scheduled to conclude. Working with Ames VPA School and the Sweet Potato Project keeps our energy level high. Read more to learn how we turned a vacant urban lot into a productive asset to the community!

Are you looking for green living ideas?  Do you want to learn how to live more sustainably? Are you planning to build a new house? Have comfort issues and want to make improvements to where you live now? Join us for the Green Homes Festival on Saturday, June 3, 2017 at the Missouri Botanical Garden. This is the 16th year of our signature Garden event. The Festival is a hands-on, day-long festival of learning, playing, and engaging with people of all ages and backgrounds who share an in...

Spring is a time for cleaning: getting rid of the dust bunnies, washing away the winter blues, making the floors shine and the windows sparkle. It’s also a time to clean up your flower beds, and fill them with nutrients for new plantings. Forget those toxic chemicals and commercial soil amendments. Learn how to spruce up your world in an inexpensive, sustainable way with our spring classes.Kitchen CompostingThursday, May 257 to 8:30 p.m.Education PlantLab at MBGComposting doesn’t hav...

When you see little black dots marching across your kitchen wall (or windowsill, sink or floor), reach for the magnifying glass, not the can of bug spray.Ants come inside our houses when their colonies wake up in spring. As they clean out winter flotsam from their home, they seek the nearest source of water and food, inside the structure they inhabit (house walls) – and usually, if not intentionally, provided by us. The tiny “sugar ants” we meet as weather warms may nest in wal...