The PETAL Project

🗓️June PETAL Events! 🌻

🪏🍅June 13, 9-11 AM: Community Garden Workday at the Trinity Presbyterian Church. Helps us prep and grow in the new community garden.

🤲🌱June 14, Afternoon: Indivisible Denton Event on the Downtown Square - PETAL will be sharing seeds with community intention messages, and Denton Zine & Art Party will have supplies to make mutual aid zines.

🌎🌊June 18, 6-8:30 PM: “Can’t Stop Change” Documentary Screening featuring Q***r Climate Stories from the Florida Frontlines - with Pridenton and TWU Environmental Science - at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios - Free.

🧵🪡June 20, 1-3 PM: Mending & Repair Workshop at North Lakes Rec Center w/ Sustainable Denton - bring projects to sew, mend, repair, and repurpose.

See you outside! 🌤️

🪏Reminder! ⭐️ We have our next Garden Workday this Saturday, May 30, 9-11 am at Trinity Presbyterian Church. 🌱

All gardening levels welcome, we’ll be cleaning up our big plot and planting. Bring your own tools if you have them. We’ll have some tools, gloves, and seeds! 🌞

2200 N. Bell Ave., Denton TX 76209

🌎🎥 Free Film Screening 🌎🎥
“Can’t Stop Change: Q***r Climate Stories from the Florida Frontlines”
Thursday, June 18th, at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios
Doors 6 pm | Showtime 6:30 pm

Presented by The PETAL Project, Pridenton, & TWU Environmental Science:
“Can’t Stop Change: Q***r Climate Stories from the Florida Frontlines” weaves interviews with 15 LGBTQ2S+ artists, organizers, and educators across Florida (and the new Florida diaspora) into an intersectional climate justice narrative. Amidst so much unknown, “Can’t Stop Change” shares an emergent hope: Moments of disaster create opportunities for immense transformation, where what once seemed impossible becomes possible. As we look towards the next hurricane season and next legislative cycle, how can we work with the changes to come to shape the futures we want?

🌻Here in Texas, we share in the struggles of our southern LGBTQ2S+ comrades and amplify their message of emergent hope and transformative change. This event is free; any donations will go to Q***rs 4 Climate Justice and the Q***r Ecojustice Project (queerecoproject.org/cant-stop-change)

* This film is not yet rated. It contains some brief nudity (non-sexual), and occasional adult language. It also contains hurricane footage and discussion of state violence that may be distressing to some viewers. Recommended for adults or young adult minors with permission. Please note that the specifics of Florida legislation mentioned in the film may have changed since filming. *

Upcoming Community Garden Workdays! 🌱

Saturdays, May 23 & 30, 9-11am at the Trinity Presbyterian Church
(2200 N. Bell Ave., Denton, TX)

Help us renew this wonderful community garden space. 💚

Workday tasks: 🛠️
- weeding & removing woody plants in the raised beds
- filling beds with soil
- Planting & Seeding
- Continue clearing next big plot!

Ongoing tasks/fix ups: 🪱
- Watering schedule (daily in summer)
- Weeding and bed maintenance (Workdays!)
- Continued big plot clearing and amending
- Future planting!
- Compost area
- Fix & re-do sign(s)
- Picnic tables and shade area

Future dreamin’ ☁️
- Picnics & harvest meal sharing
- Workshops
- Nature Journaling
- Your Ideas for the garden!

🌻Also May 23 - we’ll be relaxing, journaling, & tending 🐞 in the garden for
Artist studio tours ✨

✨Experience Good Nature ✨
We’re getting our swap goodies ready! Are you?!
We’ll have some plants, seeds, envelopes, zines, journals, & more!

The PETAL Project & Denton Zine & Art Party Present: a Plant & Art / Seed & Zine SWAP!

Saturday, May 16
Harvest House
1-5 PM

🪴🔄 What’s the Swap? 🔄 🫟

Got a new zine you want to share? Extra seeds from the garden? Spring cleaning the creative space? Random little art projects that should see the light of day!? 🌤️

Trade, share, & swap your homegrown garden goodies & handmade zines & small art. 🌻📒

You can make a mini zine & swap it, grab some seed packets to go, make some seed balls, & start your next creative project!
🌱💌

✨🌱Exciting new garden project! 🌱✨
We will be partnering with Trinity Presbyterian Church to revitalize & manage their community garden space! This beautiful garden has raised beds, an in-ground plot, compost area, beautiful big tree neighbors, is surrounded by wildflowers, and will allow us to do year-round & perennial gardening! The garden space will be a community project with harvests going to our volunteers and the kitchen at Our Daily Bread shelter.

First we gotta help spruce it up! Join us:
Saturdays, May 23rd & 30th, 9-11am for garden workdays. 2200 N. Bell Ave., Denton, TX 76209 🌻

Thank you to our Litter Clean Up Crew - Go Trash Pandas! 🦝 We cleaned up a few neighborhood blocks & kept litter from breaking down in our storm drains, waterways, & habitat corridors. Happy Earth Day 🌎💚

Happy Earth Week! Do somethin’ good for the planet this week! Join us 🌎

🗑️4/22: Earth Day Litter Clean Up at 6pm - Crescent St & Fulton St in Denton. Supplies provided!

📒4/23: Nature Journaling outreach at Newton-Rayzor Elementary & Denton Wesley Foundation at UNT

🪻4/24: Garden Party at the UNT Sustainable Arts Garden, 5-7pm

🌾4/25: 10am BioBlitz & Hike & 4-8pm Springtime on the Prairie Eco-Faire at Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center Collins Prairie

🌻 Enjoy our Earth Day Bingo & celebrate all the joys of our wonderful shared planet Earth! 🌏💚

The PETAL Project & Denton Zine & Art Party Present: a Plant & Art / Seed & Zine SWAP Meet!

Saturday, May 16
Harvest House
1-5 PM

🪴🔄 What’s the Swap? 🔄 🫟

Got a new zine you want to share? Extra seeds from the garden? Spring cleaning the creative space? Random little art projects that should see the light of day!? 🌤️

Trade, share, & swap your homegrown garden goodies & handmade zines & small art. 🌻📒

You can make a mini zine & swap it, grab some seed packets to go, make some seed balls, & start your next creative project!
🌱💌

Join us for a pop-up show and artist talk with photographer and documentary filmmaker Vahid Valikhani, whose work bridges photography and film to examine social, cultural, and historical dynamics through the lens of landscape.

Thursday, January 29th, 6-8pm at the Greater Denton Arts Council (400 E. Hickory St., Denton, TX 76201).
Free, all-ages, light refreshments provided.

Vahid’s photographic practice began with documenting constructed, altered, and often overlooked landscapes. His projects investigate the relationship among the environment, society, and the state, revealing how landscapes become sites of political agendas, consumerism, and environmental consequences. Shaped by experiences of displacement and adaptation, his cross-cultural perspective informs an ongoing exploration of belonging and the political dimensions of place. Reflecting on his approach, Vahid notes: “My creative process has been reshaped by displacement, politics, and cultural expectations. Photography became not only a way of navigating unfamiliar surroundings, but also a tool to process the cultural and social aspects of the place I inhabit.”

Vahid is the author of the monograph Nebraska, Tampa: The Return to the Streets (Tavaali Publication, 2025) and currently serves as Director of the Beatrice M. Haggerty Gallery at the University of Dallas. At the event, guests will have the opportunity to view selected works from his series Forms of Light, Elegies, and The Othered Eye, which reflect his sustained engagement with environmental and cultural narratives.

vahidvalikhani.com