The Dandelion Festival and NCAP:

The first dandelion festival was in 2023. Previous Healthy Food and Farms manager Christina Stucker-Gassi heard that a restaurateur and brewer in Boise was unhappy that his neighborhood park was being sprayed with pesticides. He was concerned about his children being exposed to pesticides like glyphosate. She approached him about making a beverage using dandelions to raise awareness about Boise's pesticide free parks pilot. The Festival was a collaborative effort between the city, local food and beverage establishments and several nonprofits including NCAP! Each year the community harvests dandelions from spray-free parks around Boise and they get turned into delicious beer and root beer by Bittercreek Alehouse.

This year:

The Dandy Lion

Built by local artist Noel Nelson (pictured below, @lastnoel). This puppet magically came together in a week of artistic fervor full of felting, folding cardboard, and lots and lots of hot glue. With terracotta pot feet, foam noodle legs, dandelion leaf body, a tail with a dandelion seed head (we’d encourage kids to blow on it to make a wish), and a beautiful, friendly felted wool face of a very dandy lion. 

Pollinator Stamps and Dandelion Print

We had a lovely little dandelion designed and drawn by local artist Dana Wagner (@dana.wags). We also had a bunch of stamps designed and carved by a cool little print collective called Open Letter Collective (@openlettercollective). The stamps featured native pollinators like a monarch butterfly, striped sweat bee, bottle fly (flies pollinate too!), and many more. 

Day at the Park

We brought out our stamps and puppet to Kristin Armstrong Park and had a wonderful day of having hundreds of folks pet and puppet the Dandy Lion and learn lots of pollinator facts as they decorated their dandelion with the stamps. We had a lot of good conversations with fellow Idahoans about how we can live healthier, more sustainable lives by creating systemic change around pesticide usage, and how we can bring that into our homes by using NCAP’s guides to defend against pests and weeds using the least toxic principle.

We hope to see you at next year's festival!