Each year, the Early Spring’s Glory Garden Tour highlights some of San Diego County’s most opulent gardens, and benefits Fraternity House and Michaelle House, San Diego’s only licensed homes offering transitional, long-term and hospice care to men and women living with HIV/AIDS. This year’s tour takes place on Sunday, April 10, from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Gardens featured in the tour this year are:

Southwestern Succulence, consisting of a front yard filled with cacti and succulents, a Southwestern-style home with a Latin-American flair, and avenues of palm trees leading to rose gardens, bamboo groves, and a small orchard, with mosaic works along the way.

Vive La France, a French country-style home with extensive grounds featuring a private vineyard.

Riveting Roses, a Bucks County-style fieldstone house with roses, a formal herb garden and extensive perennial borders.

An Amazing Place, with backyard games, an artist’s studio and a large fruit and nut orchard, at which Team Guido from the hit reality TV series “The Amazing Race” will serve light refreshments.

Admission is $25 per person, and includes light refreshments and appetizers along the four-garden tour. Registration will take place at Olivenhain Meeting Hall, located at 423 Rancho Santa Fe Rd. in Encinitas.

For more information, contact Abby Schwartz, development manager, at

(760) 736-0292 ext.103

or ALSfraternityhouse@prodigy.net.

Celebrate Verna King’s life of service at a special tribute banquet honoring the lifelong political and social activist taking place at the Tubman Chavez Center from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 24. Congressmember Bob Filner will keynote the event.

Tickets are $25. The Tubman Chavez Center is located at 415 Euclid Ave. RSVP to Pat Washington at (619) 682-5388 or themorgangirl@aol.com.

The seventh annual Cesar E. Chavez Commemorative Breakfast takes place on Monday, March 28, from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. at the San Diego Convention Center. The keynote speaker will be Andrès Irlando, president of the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation, a nonprofit charitable organization established by the family of the late civil rights leader.

Admission is $30 per person and $20 per student.

For more information, call (619) 252-7854.

After many years of outsourcing the production of its annual souvenir program, San Diego LGBT Pride has assembled a team of agencies to help produce the informational booklet in-house.

According to Suanne Pauley, executive director for San Diego LGBT Pride, the program will offer the same look and feel from past years in terms of size, article content and schedule details about Pride’s three-day celebration in July. The program will also include text translated into Spanish.

Supporting agencies include Missing Ink, which will assist in layout, Uybungco Grafix to help advertisers create their ads, and Ad Ink, which will oversee ad sales for the program.

Nancy Moors of Ad Ink said nonprofit organizations receive a 25 percent discount on ad rates if they meet the early-bird deadline of April 15. The final deadline for all other ads is May 22.

For more information about placing ads, call Moors at (619) 260-1929. Those in need of ad design can call Cindy Uybungco at (619) 585-8940.

This year’s Pride weekend titled “Equal Rights! No More, No Less!” is scheduled for July 29-31. Call the Pride office at (619) 297-7683 for more information.

A fundraising reception for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will take place at the El Cortez Hotel at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, April 11. Admission is $500 for the host committee, or $100 for the general reception.

The El Cortez Hotel is located at 702 Ash St. in downtown San Diego.

Contact Mike Montgomery at (415) 279-9042 for more information.

The Center’s Women’s Resource Center has a multitude of upcoming events, and is seeking volunteers for two-to-four-hour shifts to help set up chairs, manage food and concession sales and help with reception duties.

Events include Celebrate Women’s History Month on Sunday, March 20, taking place from 2:00 to 10:30 p.m.; Sapphic Cinema on Friday, March 25, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.; Iron-jawed Angels film and “The F Word” discussion on Wednesday, March 30, from 5:45 to 9:30 p.m.; and the Lunafest Film Festival on Friday, April 22, from 5:00 to 10:00 p.m.

Contact Eddie Valtierra, volunteer coordinator at The Center, at (619) 692-2077 ext. 111 or evaltierra@thecentersd.org, or Claudia Lucero at (619) 692-2077 ext. 206 or clucero@thecentersd.org for more information.

Immigration Equality San Diego meets the third Monday of every month at 7:00 p.m. at The Center. The topic for the Monday, March 21, meeting is the Permanent Partners Immigration Act (PPIA). The Permanent Partners Immigration Act is a bill that will allow U.S. citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their same-sex partners for immigration to the U.S. The PPIA would extend to same-sex couples the same immigration rights currently enjoyed by legal spouses, as several other countries already do. Come out and learn about this bill, which will be introduced during the current congressional session in Washington, D.C.

Email Sam at mactoba@yahoo.com for more information.

Additionally, Immigration Equality San Diego is co-sponsoring an immigration workshop on Saturday, April 16, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Burnham Institute. This workshop will focus on self-petitioning, which enables foreign-born researchers, scientists and technical professionals the opportunity to petition for permanent residency (green card) in the United States. This workshop will provide the necessary tools and accurate information from experienced immigration attorneys. The workshop is free of charge but space is limited. RSVP to jkp135@att.net.

The San Diego LGBT Community Leadership Council presents renowned GLBT leader Evan Wolfson from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, at The Center.

Wolfson, the executive director of Freedom to Marry, has been at the forefront of the national fight for marriage equality. During his time with Lambda Legal, he served as co-counsel in the historic Hawaii same-sex marriage case and appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in Lambda’s discrimination case, Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale. Additionally, Wolfson was listed on Time magazine’s “The 100 Most Influential People in the World” list in 2004.

“Evan Wolfson is a true leader whose work has had a dramatic impact on our collective efforts to secure LGBT equal rights,” said Dr. Delores A. Jacobs, chief executive officer of The Center. “I have tremendous respect for his vision and courageous legal work on behalf of our community.”

Immediately following his speech, Wolfson will be available to sign his book, Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry.

The April 21 event is free and open to the public. A private reception with Wolfson will take place prior to the event. Call Zac Mikles at (619) 692-2077 ext. 246 or email zmikles@thecentersd.org for more information.