Here's something you don't hear us say often: a city-affiliated institution is doing something nice, and it's actually free.

The San Francisco Botanical Garden is hosting a Free Spring Garden Market, giving locals a chance to snag plants, get gardening advice, and enjoy one of the city's most underrated green spaces without reaching for their wallets.

In a city where a single avocado toast runs you $19 and parking tickets arrive faster than Muni buses, "free" is a word that deserves a moment of appreciation. The Botanical Garden — tucked inside Golden Gate Park — is already one of SF's best-kept secrets for residents (who, reminder, get free admission year-round with proof of residency). A spring market on top of that? It's the kind of community event that actually justifies the parks budget.

Look, we spend a lot of time in this space pointing out where the city blows money on consultants, committees, and programs that produce nothing but glossy PDFs. So credit where it's due: this is a straightforward public amenity doing what public amenities should do — creating value for taxpayers without an attached price tag or a twelve-layer bureaucratic approval process.

If you haven't visited the Botanical Garden lately, pair it with a free trip up the De Young Museum's observation tower — as one local visitor noted, "you can do it for free without a museum ticket" — and you've got yourself a genuinely great afternoon in Golden Gate Park that costs you exactly zero dollars.

Spring in San Francisco is fleeting and precious (before Karl the Fog reclaims his throne in June). Take advantage. Go get a free plant. Put it on your fire escape. Watch it grow. Feel something.

It's not lost on us that the best things this city offers tend to be the ones where government just… opens a gate and gets out of the way. More of this, fewer $1.7 million toilet projects, please.