Santa Rosa: If you’re the type that must let the water run while you wait for it to warm up, the city of Santa Rosa has a rebate for you. Install a new recirculating water pump to get nearly on-demand hot water every time you turn on the tap, and Santa Rosa Water will give you up to $250 per pump. The pumps are available at most local home improvement and hardware stores. A pre-inspection is required before any work is completed. For more information or to arrange for an inspection, call 707-543-3985 or visit bit.ly/3wq0C96 or srcity.org/rebates.

Petaluma: Gather up your best cuttings and bring them to the Petaluma Regional Library Saturday, April 2, for an old-fashioned swap meet with a new twist.

The library and the Sonoma County Master Gardeners are teaming up to host the exchange, a chance to share cuttings from your garden and take home cuttings from other gardeners. Master Gardeners Jack Leutza and Trudy Jamieson will kick off the event with a short presentation on growing succulents and creating container succulent gardens. The free outdoor swap is from 10 a.m. to noon. 100 Fairgrounds Drive.

For more information, visit sonomamg.ucanr.edu.

Santa Rosa: Learn to appreciate all the insects in your garden during a talk at the Santa Rosa Garden Club on Monday, March 28.

Sonoma County Master Gardener Anne Lowings, who was born and raised in England where gardening is a national pastime, will identify common garden pests and the beneficial insects that help control them. Lowings is a member of the Master Gardeners’ Integrated Pest Management Team. Nonmembers are welcome. 1:30 p.m. Luther Burbank Art & Garden Center, 2050 Yulupa Ave. For more information, visit santarosagardenclub.com.

Occidental: The Mother Garden Nursery at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center is reopening for the season on Saturday, April 2, with one of the most intriguing selections of plants you’ll find at a plant sale.

Among the offerings will be culinary and medicinal herbs like nettles for nettle soup, horehound for making your own cough drops, yellow-flowered Celandine poppies and an original Ecology Center-variety curly motherwort, which has the same medicinal properties as regular motherwort but a more rumpled leaf surface and curly leaf margins. They also will have Australian tea trees, which are used for making nutmeg-flavored tea and treating athlete’s foot and Turkish plantain, which is good in salads.

The nursery is known for interesting California native plants, unusual perennial food crops like cardoons and sea beets and edible flowering maples.

Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, a longtime intentional community dedicated to sustainable living, propagates from a rotating list of nearly 600 varieties of plants, many grown from plants and seed from their garden.

The nursery will be open weekends, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., through Oct. 30. 15290 Coleman Valley Road. 707-874-1557. oaec.org

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com. OnTwitter @megmcconahey.

Like most everyone, I love a good feature story that takes me somewhere I’ve never been or tells me something I don’t know. Where can I take you? Who in Sonoma County would you like to know better? I cover the people, places and ideas that make up Sonoma County, with general features, people profiles and home and garden, interior design and architecture stories. Hit me up with your tips, ideas and burning questions.

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