This year’s Spring Home & Garden issue has 10 easy projects you can tackle to freshen up your home, tips on container gardening, new options to recycle paint and batteries and more. Plus, find a special calendar of upcoming home and garden events.
Year-round container gardening
Container gardening offers a practical and beautiful solution for growing flowers, vegetables and herbs in central Illinois where weather extremes and limited space often challenge traditional gardening. For leafy edibles, start with herbs and salad greens, which tolerate a wide range of light conditions from windowsill to kitchen garden and actually favor a little shade…
New community garden available at Hobbs Park
The Springfield Park District is transforming former baseball fields into a community garden at Hobbs Park, located south of Bunn Park near the intersection of Fox Bridge Road and Culver Avenue. Building on the success of the Jefferson Park Community Garden, this new initiative will provide a community garden serving the east side of Springfield. …
Illinois launches paint recycling program
If you have old cans of paint stashed in your basement or garage that you don’t how to get rid of, there’s good news for you. Illinois residents can now recycle latex and oil-based architectural paint products at numerous retail hardware and paint stores, including in Springfield and surrounding communities. This is due to the…
Easy refreshes for spring
According to the daffodils and tulips popping up outdoors, we made it through another Midwest winter! Now that we are surrounded by more green plants and sunshine, many people start to feel the urge to shake off those winter blues and let the bright light in. And while the impulse to do a full-blown spring…
Recycle your household batteries
Illinois residents can now conveniently recycle household batteries. As a result of legislation that took effect Jan. 1, Illinois has a battery stewardship program. Lowe’s in Springfield and Home Depot in Jacksonville are examples of places where people can take household batteries to be recycled at no charge. The Portable and Medium Format Battery…
This article appears in April 16-22, 2026.
