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Get ready for the Annual World Naked Gardening Day (WNGD)!
People across the globe are encouraged, on the first Saturday of May, to tend their portion of the world's garden unclothed as nature intended.
Gardening has a timeless quality, and anyone can do it: young and
old, singles or groups, the fit and infirm, urban and rural. An elderly lady in a Manhattan apartment can plant new annuals in her window box. Families can rake leaves in their back yard. Freehikers can pull invasive weeds along
their favorite stretch of trail. More daring groups can make rapid clothes-free sorties into public parks to do community-friendly stealth cleanups.
Why garden naked? First of all, it's fun! Second only to
swimming, gardening is at the top of the list of family-friendly activities people are most ready to consider doing nude. Moreover, our culture needs to move toward a healthy sense of both body acceptance and our relation to
the natural environment. Gardening naked is not only a simple joy, it reminds us--even if only for those few sunkissed minutes--that we can be honest with who we are as humans and as part of this planet.
"The body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the campfire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one's flesh like
radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure glow not explainable."
- John Muir, founder of The Sierra Club
All that's involved is getting naked and making the world's gardens--whatever their size, public or private--healthier and
more attractive. WNGD has no political agenda, nor is it owned or organized by any one particular group. Naked individuals and groups are encouraged to adopt the day for themselves.
Events like WNGD can help develop a sense of community among people of every stripe. Taking part in something that is bigger than any one household, naturist group, or gardening club can move gardeners with an au naturel joie de vivre
toward becoming a community. And in the case of WNGD, it's fun, costs no money, runs no unwanted risk, reminds us of our tie to the natural world, and does something good for the environment.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: For the first 10 years of its existence, the WNGD
website was hosted by the friendly people at ClothesFree International. Thank you! CFI fully endorses WNGD's global vision of promoting environmental stewardship and asserting our body-positive beliefs with
creative and empowering international gardening events.
From mid-2015 to mid-2021, the Naturist Education Foundation (NEF) hosted the site. Thank you to NEF.
However, 'hosted' hasn't always meant maintained or updated. So in 2021,
a couple of naturists, including one of the original Body Freedom Collaborators, took back the responsibility of maintaining and updating, as well as hosting. So, here we are at wngd.net, with a renewed planting of
the perennial website, freshly renourished and lovingly tended.
"When you're out there with a gentle breeze on you, every last hair on your body feels it. You feel completely connected with the
natural world in a way you just can't in clothes."
- Barbara Pollard of Abbey House Gardens (Source: The Age)
Hear how people are celebrating and personalizing WNGD around the world.
View the Wikipedia article on WNGD for more information!
View articles on WNGD and naked gardening from Nude & Natural magazine.
Top right four images on header of this page courtesy of Michael Cooney/The
Naturist Society. Black and white vintage images from Freikörperkultur #71, 47 and 62 circa 1940s/1950s. (Source: Mousebit). Click images to
enlarge
Text by Mark Storey. Web design and editing by Daniel Johnson and Bob Morton. Last updated June 29, 2021.
Make World Naked Gardening Day EVERY DAY!
WNGD is a collaborative project founded in May of 2005 by the Body Freedom Collaborative (BFC) 
CLICK THE IMAGE FOR INFO on BFC, as featured in Nude & Natural magazine, issue N 23.1, Autumn 2003. Used with permission of The Naturist Society Foundation.
Dancing in the fields epitomizes the spirit of communion and back-to-basics living.
So what should you do? First of all, on the first Saturday of May, find an opportunity to get naked and do some gardening. Do so alone,
with friends, with family, with your gardening club, or with any other group collected for that purpose. Do it inside your house, in your back yard, on a hiking trail, at a city park, or on the
streets. Stay private or go public. Make it a quiet time or make it a public splash. Just get naked and make your part of the botanical world a healthier and more attractive place.
Secondly, tell someone about your experience.
No one owns this event, so it does not really matter whom you tell, but tell someone. Tell your friends about your day of naked gardening; write down what you thought of it and email it to your local newspaper; post your
thoughts and images onto an Internet site; submit stories and photos to your club newsletter.
SEASONAL INTERCHANGE
by Michael Aitken
In Winter, when the trees are
bare,
We mortals don our winter wear.
In Spring, when trees begin to dress,
We mortals then start wearing less,
Until, for some, with Summer's heat
The role reversal is complete.
Author Mark Storey on a recent World Naked Gardening Day. Photo courtesy of Kathy Blanchard.