World Naked Gardening Day

Organization

WNGD was founded and is organized by Mark Storey, consulting editor for Nude & Natural magazine and permaculturalist Jacob Gabriel, as a project of Body Freedom Collaborative (BFC). In its early days, Mark Storey had a vision of BFC engaging in "guerrilla pranksterism" such as hopping out of a van or showing up spontaneously in an urban environment and engaging in guerilla gardening.

Storey is the current project lead and he introduced the concept to readers of Nude & Natural magazine in 2005 and follow-up stories in later years in the same magazine. Corky Stanton, of Clothes Free International, who was also providing web hosting for World Naked Bike Ride at that time, supported the effort with web site hosting and promotion from the beginning of the project.

In the New York Daily News, Mark Storey notes that WNGD is not owned by any one organization. "No particular organization owns World Naked Gardening Day," Storey said, and it's not actually one large gathering of horticulturists in Seattle who strip down and shear some shrubs together."

While the phenomenon quickly spread internationally, little investment has been made by its founders. "Storey said he and Johnson haven’t spent any money or gone to any great lengths to promote World Naked Gardening Day since they initiated it. They helped create a website early on, and then receded into the background. They intended that the idea of an introduction to clothes freedom through gardening was valuable and would grow organically on its own."

Fixing the date of the event

WNGD was inspired by a combination of Gabriel's involvement in and inspiration by the success of World Naked Bike Ride, the first of which was held internationally in 2004 and the enjoyment and simplicity of Storey's experience with his wife, gardening naked in the backyard as well as his experience naked hiking and kayaking. The first annual World Naked Gardening Day event took place on September 10, 2005. In 2007, the event date was moved to the first Saturday in May where it still takes place to this day. The event takes place the day before International Permaculture Day, which takes place on the first Sunday of May.

Summer dates have been suggested due to colder temperate climate temperatures in May, to coincide with a joint World Naked Bike Ride event and for other reasons. But WNGD is about gardening, and gardeners know that spring is a key time to nurture plants. Also, WNGD may be enjoyed both indoors and outside.

Motivation

According to the organizers, "besides being liberating, nude gardening is second only to swimming as an activity that people are most ready to consider doing nude," an assertion described as "true" by The Hamilton Spectator. The organization's website claims people throughout the world are "invited to tend their portion of the world's garden clothed as nature intended."

WNGD is endorsed by The Naturist Society, Clothes Free International and American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR), among others. Storey is the co-founder and current project lead of WNGD and moderates the WNGD Yahoo! Discussion group. Although the event is associated with the socio-cultural naturist movement, its founders assert the day is intended to be "lighthearted," and void of politics.

An AANR press release, published during the sixth annual World Naked Gardening Day, described naked gardening to be a healthy practice. AANR public relations representative Tom Mulhall claims naked gardening may help boost a positive self-image.

Beyond body image, "Stanton cited fringe benefits of bare, unabashed recreation: the satisfaction of exercising in the great outdoors; the attractiveness of an all-over tan; more vitamin D on your whole body; the unbeatable experience of skinny-dipping if the naturist event involves a beach or a lake."

Private vs. public observance

While the event is most often done in secluded areas, such as at home, BFC first kicked off the event with its trademark "guerrilla pranksterism" and did a photo shoot for the project's web site in a public park. In another year Storey and Gabriel enlisted the help of local free beach users at an unofficial clothing-optional beach park on Lake Washington, in Seattle. Storey has also suggested that some remote hiking location would be quiet enough to host a trail cleanup.

Many people chose not to venture beyond the relative safety of non-public areas. “It’s not about exposing your body to other people,” said Corky Stanton, of Clothes Free International, an organization that promotes nude recreation. “It’s about body acceptance and being one with nature on your own. ... We actually do these events in secluded areas,”

During the fifth annual World Naked Gardening Day in the United Kingdom, celebrated in 2010, organizers encouraged people to go naked either in their private gardens or in public parks. According to the Sky News Online, organizers of the event thought an "au naturel joie de vivre" will bind all communities and people regardless of their background and age.

Gardens Everywhere Bike Parade

In 2009, inspired by the success of both World Naked Bike Ride Seattle and WNGD, along with being inspired by his permaculture schooling at the time, Gabriel founded the Gardens Everywhere Bike Parade (GEBP), with co-organizer Kelda Lorax, a local permaculture designer, advocate, and instructor. It was Kelda who came up with the GEBP name for the event. The ride in part was to take the simplicity and theme of gardening in WNGD and take it more public and deeper into principles of permaculture. The clothing-optional bike ride showcased local permaculture projects as well as general permaculture principles. This same year Gabriel was involved in co-founding the Beacon Food Forest, the first known food forest on public lands.

The Ride launched from Om Culture in Wallingford, went East on the Burke-Gilman Trail. Local artist Franz and others had staged a body painting and art bike decorating party at that location. The ride then headed North on The Ave and toured the University District, stopped at the University District Farmer's Market and University Heights P-Patch at the University Heights Center. A tour was given by Kelda and the rainwater harvesting system was highlighted.

It continued up the Ave to a Shiga's Community Garden, which is also a Seattle Department of Neighborhoods Community Garden. At this time the garden was being cleared of invasive weeds leftover from a vacant lot into future planting in 2010. By coincidence volunteers were clearing that lot and GEBP helped the group for a few minutes carry out invasive weeds. The Seattle Police responded at Shiga's Garden from a complaint from the stop at the University Farmer's Market and left when the officers where reassured that riders were not going back to the market.

The ride then left traveled North to Thrive restaurant and enjoyed gourmet raw vegan food prepared by the restaurant staff for the riders. The ride continued to Roosevelt P-Patch and dropped in on a friends garden in the area. The ride continued through the Roosevelt district to Permaculturist Jenny Pell's house, then to Mighty-O Donuts in the Tangletown neighborhood, where the group serenaded, unsuccessfully the workers for donuts. The ride continued to a tour of Seattle Tilth at the Home of the Good Shepherd, took a tour of the grounds and surprised a wedding party taking place in the area bordering Meridian Playground and the Good Shephard Center.

After leaving Meridian Playground, the ride went to an intersection repair done with a mural of a giant ladybug. The Wallingford Ladybug, known as Wallybug, is located at the intersection of N 49th Street and Burke Ave N in Wallingford. It was created in 2004. The group then stopped in front of a residence where the homeowners were gardening in their front parking strip and the group sang for them. Another stop was made at a residence offering refreshments to riders, another stop at a neighbor selling organic heirloom produce from her yard and the ride ended at a private residence for a clothing-optional party in a backyard gardening featuring a handmade cobb masonry oven.

A fundraising film party was held at Thrive Cafe on September 9, 2009 which showed footage of the event collected by the riders and photographers.

Notable and historical naked gardening

Adam and Eve were noted to garden naked, before the fall of man, in the Book of Genesis.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was known to garden nude at the Steepletop estate in New York as part of her Bohemian lifestyle.

Walt Whitman is also known to have written about his naked experiences in nature. In Specimen Day he wrote: "Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! --ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is--nor what faith or art or health really is."

Actress and PETA spokesperson, Alicia Silverstone, in an interview with Health magazine said "It probably started when I was doing my garden the first time. I’d be out there, and it would be scorching hot, so I would take off all of my clothes and garden. And then I would jump in the pool and swim - and I always get in the pool naked, because why would you want to put on a bathing suit?"

One month prior to the first WNGD event on September 10, 2005, Ian and Barbara Pollard, resident gardening experts on ITV's This Morning, held its first "clothes optional day" at Abbey House Gardens in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England.

The New York Times ran an article about naked gardening neighbors next-door.