Get ready for the Third Annual World Naked Gardening Day (WNGD)! People across the globe are encouraged, on Saturday, May 5, 2007 to tend their portion of the world's garden clothed 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.

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.

Dancing in the fields epitomizes the spirit of communion and back-to-basics living.

"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.

Images from Freikörperkultur #71, 47 and 62 circa 1940's/1950's. (Source: Mousebit). Click images to enlarge.

"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."

- Walt Whitman, Specimen Day

So what should you do? First of all, on May 5, 2007 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.

WNGD will be the first Saturday of each May. See this site, WNGD.org, for updates, reports, and more information as May 5, 2007 draws near.

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, : I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

- Walt Whitman: From Song of Myself (1855)

Images above and below courtesy Integral Nacktiv.

Media contact and for general info:

and join in the promotion of this annual event alongside the groups listing on the right.

Coordinate events and share ideas with others around the world!

Image below courtesy Mark Storey/The Naturist Society.

"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)

Media, press and blogging coverage of WNGD

Click here for details

Endorsements

Going Organic - Organic gardening and living made easy! Find out more about organic gardening enthusist Jay North's naked gardening advocacy in "Is Grandpa Naked in the Garden again?")

WNGD is very grateful to the friendly people at the ClothesFree International for their support of our mission and for hosting our web site.

T.H.O.N.G. - Topless Humans Organized for Natural Genetics - Putting Our Bodies Between Your Lips And Biotech. THONG supports and fights for: Community gardens; Foraging; Wild ecosystems; Organic and Sustainable Agriculture; Indigenous peoples land and human rights; Fair trade organic coffee and chocolate and other mildly/at times strongly addictive aphrodisiacs; Degradable vegetable packaging; Hemp production and multiple uses; Beauty, (which is) lushness, diversity, the unexpected, the inspired; and Humanenvironmentnature who refuses to be named, classed, categorized, jailed, silenced, repressed, stifled, drained, polluted, owned, and disappeared.

The Naturist Society has been a leader in promoting body acceptance and nude recreation for more than 20 years.

"Officially, The Naturist Society was formed in 1980. Unofficially, however, it goes back much further, to the American "free beach" movement of the 1970s and, earlier still, to a back-to-nature ethos that emerged in Europe during the industrial revolution."

The Naturist Society is also the home of Nude & Natural (N) magazine, the leading publication on naturism in the United States and the authority on socially responsible and adventurous social nudity.

The Naturist Action Committee (NAC) exists to advance and protect the rights of naturists throughout North America. NAC supports the responsible recreational nude use of public lands.

GO BARE - The UK's leading on-line resource for all things naturist including news, articles, reviews, information and community-based discussion. Their main goal is to positively promote naturism both in the UK and around the world.

Wreck Beach Preservation Society To preserve the Wreck Beach area [near University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia], including foreshore and cliffs, in as nearly a natural state as possible from Spanish Banks West to the Musqueam Reserve!

Seattle Free Beach Campaign (SFBC) In addition to encouraging au naturel use of local beaches, SFBC also works with Seattle Parks & Recreation and NAC in organizing beach cleanups.

The Organic Living Party (OLP) "A full spectrum of progressive politics and culture". OLP supports WNGD as part of its commitment to environmental stewardship and body-positive culture.

Work Less Party "Work less, consume less, live more. By doing this we will have a better quality of life, and at the same time preserve something of our planet for future generations."

Oregon Clothing-Optional Beach Alliance (ORCOBA) A non-profit, grass-roots collection of individuals dedicated to the preservation, maintenance, protection and promotion of family-friendly, clothing-optional recreation at Oregon's two officially-designated nude beaches, Sauvie Island (Collins Beach) and Rooster Rock State Park.

FKKayakers is a loosely-knit group of beginner and experienced open water kayakers who like to paddle naked and venture out to remote skinny-dipping locations.

Integral Nacktiv A German outdoor recreation group. Nacktiv is a combination of the German word naked=nackt and active=aktiv. Integral means, that nakedness should not be something hidden, something you must be ashamed of: we integrate our nakedness in every-day-live. We are not only naked at home, but also in many outdoor-activities, such like biking, jogging, walking, riding and so on.

World Naked Bike Ride - It is time to stop indecent exposure to automobile emissions and to celebrate the power and individuality of our bodies! Naked Bicycle People Power!

WNGD is a collaborative project founded in May of 2005 by the Body Freedom Collaborative (BFC)