DURHAM, N.H. -Usher in spring with a visit to the University of New Hampshire Macfarlane greenhouses during the annual open house Friday and Saturday, March 25 and 26, 2011. This year's event will again provide displays and plenty of information to help chase away winter blues and welcome spring. The greenhouses will be open from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. both days.

UNH staff and students will present colorful displays and educational lectures of interest to home gardeners and landscapers. Visitors can attend seminars on rain gardens, culinary herbs, and organic vegetable gardening. Garden show-quality displays will showcase sustainable landscaping, living walls, Mother Goose rhymes, and rain harvesting. Experts will be on hand to answer questions on encouraging native pollinators, how to attract butterflies, and carnivorous plants.

Additional displays include information on the N.H. Master Gardener program, sustainable greenhouse production, and much more. Publications by UNH authors also will be available for sale. Other open house activities include plant sales, greenhouse tours, and a coloring contest for children. The Thompson School Horticultural Club will host the Greenhouse Café, which helps fund their spring trip to Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.

Coinciding with the open house on Saturday is the Little Royal Livestock show at the Skoglund Livestock Arena at UNH. This free event, open to the public, showcases students competing against one another for the best turned-out cows or horses. In addition, the Seacoast Home & Garden Show (http://www.homegardenflowershow.com/) is at the UNH Whittemore Center on Saturday.

The greenhouse open house is free and open to the general public. The UNH greenhouses are located off Main Street on the west end of Durham. Lectures will take place in Putnam Hall across the parking lot from the greenhouses.  For more information, please call 862-3200 or go to http://www.thompsonschool.unh.edu/events.

The Greenhouse Open House is sponsored by UNH Cooperative Extension, the Department of Biological Sciences, the Thompson School of Applied Science, the NH Agricultural Experiment Station, and the College of Life Sciences & Agriculture.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.

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Caption: Usher in spring with a visit to the University of New Hampshire Macfarlane greenhouses during the annual open house Friday and Saturday, March 25 and 26, 2011.