Naturalist Symposium

2025 Columbus Botanical Garden Naturalist Symposium - March 8th and 9th

Seeds of Change: Planting the Future with Gardening, Regenerative Agriculture, and Sustainable Living

March 8th, 2025 - Speaker Day 8:45am - 3:30pm 

At the Columbus Botanical Garden, our mission is to celebrate the beauty, inspiration, and wonder of the natural world while educating current and future stewards of its care. Our annual Naturalist Symposium intends to accomplish this by instilling a sense of curiosity and igniting a love of the natural world in our surrounding community. This year's event will focus on sustainable living and farming and gardening practices that improve soil health, water quality, biodiversity and support wildlife. 

Join us at the Columbus Botanical Garden for our first day of the naturalist symposium to learn about regenerative agriculture, gardening, and sustainable solutions that you can implement whether you own acres of land, or are living in the middle of a neighborhood here in Columbus. We are excited to be hosting a great lineup of speakers educating our audience on our local food systems, gardening and how we can implement some of these practices more sustainably in our daily lives. Our speaker day will be capped with a keynote presentation by Jenni Harris of White Oak Pastures, a zero-waste, radically traditional regenerative farm in southwest Georgia.

There will be two breakout sessions each with two different classes to choose from. Our first breakout sessions will feature a class for inexperienced gardeners looking to start or a class for more committed and experienced gardeners who are looking to begin more formal sustenance or homesteading farming. Our second breakout sessions will be a class on more sustainable water usage in your home or a class on environmentally friendly household products.

Ticket Prices

Early Bird: Until February 2nd

Member: $40

Non - Member: $50

Student: $30

Regular tickets: February 3rd - March 3rd

Member: $50

Non - Member: $60

Student: $30

Breakout session registration will open February 1st. An email will be sent out when they are open!

Day of Schedule (subject to change)

8:15 - 8:45 Check in opens

8:45 - 9:00 Opening remarks 

9:00-10:00 Plenary

10:15 - 11:15 Breakout session 1 

11:15 - 12:15 Lunch Break 

12:20 - 1:20 Breakout session 2 

1:30 - 2:00 Mini session 

2:10 - 3:30 Keynote