WHAT: The San Diego Zoo’s Discovery Days: Garden Festival presented by Sparkletts will celebrate the Zoo’s fabulous foliage with displays, tours and activities over Mother’s Day weekend. Check out the Zoo’s eight accredited collections – bamboo, ficus, acacia, orchids, palms, cycads, coral and aloe – and learn how the horticulturists grow the Zoo’s 700,000 lush and rare plants.

Themed “How Does Your Garden Grow?,” the two-day Garden Festival will feature display booths where visitors can get gardening tips on pruning techniques, soil, composting and making a home garden more beautiful and bountiful. There also will be self-guided walking tours, a scavenger hunt and kids activities. Guests can chat with a Zoo horticulturalist or insect keeper and may meet a researcher from the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research who is working to save plant species around the world and in our own backyards. A limited engagement Inside Look: Plant Lovers Tour, hosted by a Zoo horticulturist, also is available both days for guests who want to see the Zoo’s prized plant collection up-close and visit some Zoo animals that eat plants grown on Zoo grounds!

WHEN: May 10 and 11, 2014

WHERE: The San Diego Zoo, located just north of downtown San Diego in Balboa Park.

COST: Free with Zoo membership or admission, except for Inside Look: Plant Lovers Tour.

MORE INFO: www.sandiegozoo.org