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 30 and 31, 2012. This year's free 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 landscape design basics, culinary herbs, and organic vegetable gardening. Garden show-quality displays will showcase butterfly gardens, springtime in the city, and gardening with greens. Additional displays include information on salad green production, encouraging native pollinators, creating wildflower meadows, and much more. UNH experts and master gardeners will be on hand to answer questions. Publications by UNH authors also will be available for sale.

Other open house activities include plant sales, greenhouse tours, a scavenger hunt and a coloring activity for children. The Thompson School Horticultural Club will host the Greenhouse Café, which helps fund a 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.

The UNH greenhouse open house is free and open to the public. The UNH Macfarlane Greenhouses (part of the NH Agricultural Experiment Station) 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, go to http://www.thompsonschool.unh.edu/events or call 603-862-3200.

The UNH greenhouse open house is sponsored by the N.H. Agricultural Experiment Station, the Thompson School of Applied Science, UNH Cooperative Extension, and UNH Biological Sciences and Sustainable Agriculture programs of the College of Life Sciences & Agriculture.

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Photographs available to download:
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Caption: The annual open house at the University of New Hampshire's Macfarlane greenhouses, a popular rite of spring, is March 30 and 31, 2012.
Credit: UNH Photographic Services/Mike Ross