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.
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.”
