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GO: Rooted in Eastern Oregon: High Desert Tree Identification
Learn something new about the trees that are essential to Oregon’s high desert ecosystem with prolific educator Casey Clapp. Clapp, arborist, dendrologist, and spiritual Lorax, will be featured at the Oregon Natural Desert Association’s third event of the high desert. This particular lecture will focus on identifying native trees like ponderosa pine, juniper, and aspen, as well as investigating their ecological roles, and helping a Portland metro crowd connect with our diverse, fascinating, and more or less adjacent high desert environment. Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division St., tomorrowtheater.org. 7 pm Thursday, Feb. 26. $15.
GO: 2026 Portland Spring Home & Garden Show
This year’s annual Spring Home & Garden Show celebrates Portland as the City of Gardens with stunning collaborations with both local Northwest talent and some of the most iconic garden spaces imaginable. Guests are encouraged to explore immersive showcase gardens, enjoy a Floral Fashion Show featuring floral artistry as wearable design, and even help crown the People’s Choice Award winner. Collabs with Lan Su Chinese Garden, Portland Japanese Garden, MōDüRNE funktional design, SymbiOp Garden Shop, Versailles Gardens, and more will also be on full display, so make sure that camera roll is primed and ready. Portland Expo Center, 2060 N Marine Drive, homeshowpdx.com. 10 am–7 pm Thursday–Saturday and 7 am–5 pm Sunday, Feb. 26–March 1. $17, children 12 and under free with ticketholding guardian.
GO: Portland Gay Men’s Chorus presents Encores!
Encores! is an intimate concert showcasing the rare and remarkable talents of the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus that don’t often get spotlighted during their mainstage performances. In Encores!, choral members diverge from their traditional programming to uplift solo vocalists, instrumentalists, and duet partners, performing music that challenges and complements the traditional PGMC repertoire. Magenta Theater, 1108 Main St., Vancouver, Wash., pdxgmc.org. 7:30 pm Friday, Feb. 27. $45.
GO: Black Affinity Group Mother and Son Dance
This special night out organized by Black Affinity Group serves to bring together mothers and sons for a free, community-building family celebration spent dancing the night away. Expect wholesome fun and at least a few twinkle-toed angels whose dope, never-before-seen dance moves will not only reaffirm your faith in the future of our youth, they will make you reevaluate your own joint health. (Pro tip: Stretching is for everyone, y’all.) This event is primarily aimed at children between the ages of 10 and 17. Kellogg Middle School, 3400 SE 69th Ave., thebagpdx.com. 6 pm Saturday, Feb. 28. Free with reservation.
GO: Chinese New Year Cultural Fair
Welcome the year of the Fire Horse (could the Chinese zodiac be any more on the nose?) with Portland’s Chinese community at this annual cultural event showcasing both traditional and contemporary Chinese arts. This family-friendly extravaganza features not only creative vendors and artistic avenues to cultural appreciation, but also a requisite lion dance, live music, calligraphy demonstrations, and swoon-worthy martial arts demonstrations. Bonus: The event offers a variety of children’s activities. Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., oregoncc.org. 11 am Saturday, Feb. 28. $8–$10.
GO: Hina Matsuri, Doll’s Day
Hina Matsuri, also called Doll’s Day or Girl’s Day, is an annual Japanese holiday celebrating the happiness, growth, and good health of young femmes. In Japan, families with daughters mark the festival by displaying intricately crafted “hina dolls” dressed in extravagant costumes for several days before the festival. But you don’t have to be a doll collector to come through, appreciate, and snap a few of your own photos with an impressively curated traditional display of hina dolls. And because it’s 2026 and gender is a construct anyway, go ahead and bring your sons too. Jordan Schnitzer Learning Center, Portland Japanese Garden, 611 SW Kingston Ave., japanesegarden.org. 10 am Sunday, March 1. $16.50–$22.50.
SEE: Racecar Racecar Racecar
In this self-described “Lynchian thriller” written by Portland local Kallan Dana and directed by Melory Mirashrafri, a daughter and father embark on a surreal road trip across the country, filling their time doing regular father-daughter things: playing palindromic word games, excavating the past, picking up questionable hitchhikers, and shape-shifting through the gelatinous landscape of their shared nightmares. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., artistsrep.org. 2 pm Sunday, March 1. $5–$60.
GO: Michael Pollan in Conversation With Dave Miller
What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like when we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of the sea? In A World Appears, author Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives—scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual, and psychedelic—to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life, introducing us to “plant neurobiologists” searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants, as well as scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of consciousness. Pollan will be joined in conversation by Dave Miller, host of OPB’s Think Out Loud. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., revolutionhall.com. 7:30 pm Tuesday, March 3. $52–$59.
