Tohono Chul Park

Arts and engagement - Tohono Chul's art and cultural offerings celebrate the diversity of the southwest with an eye to the interactions of these cultures with their environment. Tohono Chul offers year-round changing cultural and art exhibits, regional music, year-round lecture series, workshops, and travel ed-ventures, as well as three museum shops which enable the visitor to learn more about or take home with them things they have seen while visiting. Among the changing cultural/art exhibits in our main gallery this past year were: the elements fire and water: the culmination of the four-part exhibition series revealed how artists utilize the elements of earth, fire, water, and air as mediums, processes, and subjects. And how, as subjects, these elements reflect some of the social, economic, political, and environmental issues Arizona currently faces. Prescience remains : the first two-person exhibition in the main gallery. Featuring the work of tucson icons, barbara rogers and kate breakey.the exotic sublime | land and sky : the first exhibition of a series which examined the romantic sonoran landscape as viewed from near and far - magnified or mourned from arm's length, from distant vistas, from out of this world. The smaller entry and welcome galleries hosted a variety of exhibitions. Solo exhibitions of Arizona artists included tamara hastie, paul waid, rebecca bish, and gavin hugh troy and selections from the roy j. kurtz collection of american indian art . We also hosted art talks with exhibiting artists kate breakey, barbara rogers, kate long hodges, and ted wade springer, along with a presentation/trunk sale of navajo textiles by american indian art expert terry dewald and a very special meet the artist event with Tohono o'odham artist, michael chicago in conjunction with the exhibition gathering that brought together Tohono o'odham objects from the permanent collection to accent the first exhibition of the entire cycle of paintings chicago created especially for Tohono Chul's saguaro loop trail.community and national partnerships enable us to foster both our arts & culture and natural history programs and helped us reach over 20,000 children and adults during normal years. Our tours, classes, workshops, field trips and appearances at special events throughout the city and around the world. Among these partnerships are:we continue to offer a series of workshops in mindfulness and meditation along with on-site classes in tai chi and yoga in an effort to promote health and wellness.our participation in both nea's blue star museums program, which offers free admission to active-duty military and their families throughout the summer, and act one's culture pass program, providing low- and middle-income pima county library users with free admission for two, allows us to give back to the community that supports us.

Guest services - in 2023, Tohono Chul Park welcomed a record 140,088 visitors. To diversify our audience and foster an inclusive atmosphere, we focused on creating new programming while also supporting existing programs such as: bringing the children's museum oro valley to Tohono Chul; participation in the museums for all programs, which offers reduced admission rates for snap and wic beneficiaries, introduction of a summer camp, in collaboration with the southern Arizona research, science, and engineering foundation (sarsef).tohono Chul Park has experienced significant growth thanks to our ability to maintain ongoing programs while also introducing exciting new public events. This approach not only boosted our visitor numbers but also led to a remarkable increase in memberships. From 6,652 members in 2019, our membership numbers soared to a record 9,561 in 2023. This surge is largely due to our success in both sustaining beloved events and launching new ones, which have attracted new audiences. Specifically, looking at our younger visitors, we saw a dramatic increase in engagement. From 2022 to 2023, there was a 71% rise in attendance among children aged 0-17, and an even more impressive 91.8% increase in attendance for children under 5. The addition of a children's museum and more family-friendly activities played a crucial role in this growth, drawing in families looking for educational and enjoyable experiences.

Garden and facilities - during fiscal year 2023, we saw local schools return to visiting the garden following suspension during the pandemic. 15 school groups which included 517 students, teachers, and chaperones visited the gardens. Fiscal year 2023 also saw the continued participation in bioblitz, a communal citizen-science event that documents, using the inaturalist app, as many species as can be discovered in the gardens over a four-day period. The second community day, a free day for families to experience all-ages educational offerings and performances by Tohono Chul's pantomime troupe - desert players and family musical favorite - mr. Nature, in conjunction with american public gardens association's (apga) go public gardens an evergreen initiative designed to drive the public to visit, value, and volunteer at public gardens in their area and when they travel. A full slate of classes, lectures, and workshops and the return of ed-ventures day trips bringing people to engaging and sometimes hard to get to places they might not otherwise explore alone: whitewater draw to experience sandhill cranes, organ pipe national monument to revel in desert wildflowers, the heard museum for their spectacular 65th annual indian market, and the land with no name sanctuary (tlwnns) for a high desert sculpture tour and an enlightening segment of Tohono o'odham conversations with tlwnns board member and workshop leader, thomasa rivas.37.5 of the site's 49 acres have been left as undisturbed sonoran desert. Nature trails wind through these areas allowing the visitor a gentle experience with what is to many foreign surroundings, enjoy bird watching, or encounter one of the Park's other many residents (lizards, snakes, javelina, rabbits cottontail and jack, bobcat, and fox to name a few). Part of the "disturbed" areas are devoted to a series of gardens and outdoor displays, such as the demonstration gardens, ethnobotanical garden, garden for children, spanish colonial garden, cactus/succulent and pincushion ramadas, geology wall, saguaro discovery trail, sin agua garden, desert palm oasis, changing wildflower displays, entry path winding past a succulent garden and mesquite bosque, as well as a designated monarch way station/butterfly garden.as part of its effort to encourage the use of native plants (and other arid-adapted, low-water use plants) in landscaping, Tohono Chul conducts a program to propagate hard-to-find native plant species. Currently, 200 species are under propagation. Of these,190 species are for sale at the retail greenhouse; 70 of which are exclusive to Tohono Chul. The goal is to educate people about these native plants, thereby helping to create a demand for them that will interest commercial growers in putting these plants into production. This goal is further supported by our bi-annual plant sales in spring and fall, and a special summer monsoon madness event that puts the focus on the many local specialty growers of specimen and hard-to-find desert adapted plants. On the night of the bloom of our collection of peniocereus greggii the grounds remain open past midnight so visitors can experience the splendor and fragrance of these unassuming cacti.