image description — Spring wakes up at Naumkeag in Stockbridge with thousands of daffodils.

Must-Experience Spring Events in the Berkshires

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
12:54PM / Sunday, April 12, 2026Print Story | Email Story

The sun has finally risen from the clouds and shines its golden rays on the bare trees bringing the wildlife back to life and awakening the wildlife from their blissful sleep. The snow melts and the sky cries with joy, showering the ground and filling the air with the smell of petrichor.

The grass becomes green, the leaves return, and the flowers pollinate, filling the world with the forgotten color. Nature celebrates the coming of spring and so should you. Here are some events happening this spring to help with your celebration.

SpringFest

Saturday, May 9

Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge

The 24-acre botanical garden will have free admission family fun designed to celebrate spring and community. The event features food trucks and enough children's activities to keep the youngest visitors happily busy for hours including a petting zoo, pony rides, face painting, and more. A traditional maypole dance will add an old-world flourish to the day's lineup.

The festival is part of the garden's immersive weekend experience Mother's Day weekend, coinciding with its 49th annual Plants-and-Answers Plant Sale from May 8 through 10.

The event was established in 1977 and has become a cherished Mother's Day weekend tradition for gardeners across the region. This year's edition, curated by its horticulture staff, offers hundreds of perennials, annuals, herbs, and vegetables — each selected with an emphasis on diversity and nature-based landscaping.

Daffodil and Tulip Festival

April 18 thru May 10

Naumkeag, Stockbridge

Naumkeag is a historic home and garden in Stockbridge Massachusetts which offers guided tours, world famous landscapes, amazing views, and year round programs. It is one of Berkshire County's original

Gilded Age "cottages" known for the surrounding gardens and landscape designed in the late 1800s by Nathan Barrett and later expanded by Fletcher Steele and Mabel Choate.

It will be having its annual Daffodil and Tulip Festival throughout the months of April and May showcasing over 130,000 daffodil, tulip and minor bulbs across its 8 acres of land.

The 48-acre estate will be decorated with "with a variety of blooms, containers, displays and decorations against the backdrop of stunning views of Monument Mountain and the Berkshire Hills." the website said.

Mixed bouquets, container plants, and a pre-sale of spring bulbs will be sold at a pop-up shop outside the greenhouse. Food and refreshments will be for sale at the outdoor snack shack. Admittance to the inside of the house will be permitted for self-guided tours of the first floor and to provide access to the museum's gift shop.

Tickets to the festival must be purchased in advance and will not be sold on site. Visitors must arrive during their arrival window and cannot be accommodated if early or late. The museum requests visitors limit their stay to one hour due to the high number of participants.

More information or purchase tickets here.

Baby Animal Festival

April 18 through May 10

Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield

Hancock Shaker Village will be having its Annual Baby Animal Festival giving visitors a chance to see baby lambs, goats, piglets, calves, and chicks while partaking in daily events and activities.

Families will have the chance to learn and enjoy activities including blacksmithing, woodworking, spinning, and daily Livestock 101 talks from the informative farm teams. On weekends, visitors can take pony rides and face painting.

The village offers one daily tour during Baby Animals at 10 a.m. The tour will be open to a single group of up to 20 people and must be reserved in advance because of its high popularity.

Visitors will get a behind-the-scenes look at the farm during the hourlong hayride. The farmers will spill all the dirt on the village's history, facts, and secrets.

The tour will take farm-goers to the Round Stone Barn, Dairy Ell, and barnyard so they can see calves, lambs, kids, piglets, and chicks. Interaction with some of the baby animals will be permitted, and sometimes visitors will be able to bottle-feed a calf.

The village will be open to the public at 11 and, after the tour, visitors are welcome to revisit the barn and explore.

Tags: flowers, gardens, Hancock Shaker Village,

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Lee Wants Bioremediation in Housatonic River Vernal Pool Study

05:24AM / Thursday, September 03, 2026

LEE, Mass. — The town has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and General Electric to include PCB bioremediation in its vernal pool study on the Housatonic River.

Lee officials are urging the EPA to require GE to add a bioremediation treatment arm to the vernal-pool study or provide the public with a clear explanation for why such testing is being excluded.

"This is exactly the kind of question EPA and GE should be asking before final remedy decisions are locked in," Select Board Chair Bob Jones said in a statement released to the press. "The town is not asking to slow the cleanup. We are asking EPA and GE to make the cleanup smarter, less destructive, and more protective over the long term."

An open house was held in Pittsfield earlier this summer for the Vernal Pool Pilot Study on Reach 5A of the Housatonic River, a five-mile stretch between the river's confluence and Lenox border.

EPA has required GE to conduct a Vernal Pool Pilot Study as part of the Housatonic River Rest of River remediation, comparing excavation and restoration with activated-carbon-based treatments, including a product called SediMite and powdered activated carbon, the town said.

Ten vernal pools will be cleaned of polychlorinated biphenyls in total, five with excavation and five with active carbon, and seven additional vernal pools will be monitored as controls. Construction will be complete around October, but the pools will be left to their natural processes and monitored with surveys and sampling for three years.

The Lee PCB Advisory Committee wrote a letter calling for the 21st-century approach it said could reduce long-term toxicity, avoid unnecessary destruction of sensitive habitats, and improve the effectiveness of the cleanup.

It states that Lee supports the study's purpose and agrees that EPA and GE must understand how cleanup activities affect sensitive vernal-pool ecosystems.

"The current pilot includes 10 treatment pools and seven control pools, while local officials understand that roughly 100 vernal pools may occur in the broader remediation corridor," the Aug. 27 letter reads.

"That makes the pilot study consequential: the methods tested now could shape how many sensitive wetlands are excavated, reconstructed, treated, or left with PCBs managed in place."

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