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Spring Equinox/St. Patrick’s Day Walkabout at Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve
March 17 @ 10:00 am - 1:00 pm
$50
Photo by Alexandra Nicklin: Four Directions Circle at the Vista on Taft Nature Preserve
Please note: This event is presented by the Conservation Endowment Fund (CEF), stewards of Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve. They are handling all registrations. Please visit this page to register. You can email taftgardensvisitors@gmail.com with any questions. Admission to the walkabout is $50/person which includes a $15 donation to CEF.
Registrants will receive an email from CEF with detailed directions. Please do not try to find the venue by using other maps or GPS. Allow plenty of time to find the venue and to make your way up the miles-long driveway.
Please join me for a Spring Equinox/St. Patrick’s Day Walkabout at Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve on Sunday, March 17, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. “Walkabout” is an Australian term for a temporary return to traditional Aboriginal life, taken especially between periods of work or residence in modern society and usually involving a period of travel through the bush. That is what I have planned for us in observance of the Spring Equinox, although for a much shorter time than the traditional Australian journey and as a group instead of solo.
Coincidentally, March 17 is also St. Patrick’s Day. Long before St. Paddy and Christianity arrived in Ireland, the ancient Celts celebrated the Spring Equinox with a festival known as Ostara. This festival was a celebration of the end of winter and the start of the spring season. We will honor that “pagan” tradition as well. You are strongly encouraged to wear green.
Our walkabout will begin in the Australian section of the Gardens and make its way through the wild plant communities in the Nature Preserve to the Four Directions Circle, a replica of a Native American medicine wheel on a mesa with a 360 degree view. There we will interact with the stone compass as we connect with the annual solar cycle and our own ancestral origins somewhere on Planet Earth.
As we do on all my monthly Natural History walks at the Taft Ranch, we will identify and discuss useful plants and observe birds and animal signs in the context of the local ecology. My intention is to create a space for people to connect and interact with the natural world by learning the language of nature.
No dogs or smoking, please.
MY WEATHER POLICY: Walks and hikes will go on RAIN OR SHINE unless there is a steady downpour on the morning of the event, probability of thunderstorm, or a solid forecast of either the day before. Light rain or drizzle will not result in cancellation on my part. I will update registrants by email and text, as needed, and issue refunds if I need to cancel because of the weather.
ABOUT TAFT GARDENS & NATURE PRESERVE:
A project of the nonprofit Conservation Endowment Fund, Taft Gardens and Nature Preserve was described for years as one of Ojai’s best-kept secrets. Not anymore! This botanical gem was featured 2022 in an L. A. Times article on “The 16 Most Beautiful and Inviting Public Gardens in Southern California” and also included in the RedBook Magazine list of “The 12 Most Beautiful Botanical Gardens in the United States.”
ABOUT LANNY KAUFER:
Lanny Kaufer has been leading herb walks and nature hikes, as well as foraging and medicinal plant workshops, since 1976, focusing on ethnobotany, the academic term for the human uses of plants. He is the author of Medicinal Herbs of California, published by Falcon Guides in December of 2021 and now in its third printing. Copies will be available for sale and signing after the walkabout. Lanny is the founder and director of the Ojai Herbal Symposium.