World Naked Gardening Day
| World Naked Gardening Day | |
|---|---|
| Status | active since 2005 |
| Genre | annual naturism/nudism, gardening, guerilla gardening, permaculture event |
| Date(s) | first Saturday of May |
| Frequency | Annually, first Saturday of May |
| Location(s) | international |
| Inaugurated | Saturday, September 10, 2005 |
| Founder | Jacob Gabriel & Mark Storey |
| Most recent | Saturday, May 7, 2016 |
| Previous event | Saturday, May 2, 2015 |
| Next event | Saturday, May 6, 2017 |
| Organised by | Body Freedom Collaborative |
| Website | |
| http://WNGD.org | |
World Naked Gardening Day (WNGD) is an annual international event celebrated on the first Saturday of May by gardeners and non-gardeners alike. According to NBC's Today News, WNGD "has become an annual tradition that celebrates weeding, planting flowers and trimming hedges in the buff. While it’s linked to a movement of nudists who promote wholesome and unashamed acceptance of the human body, the day is meant to be funny, lighthearted and non-political, founders say."
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."
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Wikipedia