I am very disappointed that Fritz, Subby, or HA didn't tell us about this...

[Ben E Lou]

Get ready for the inaugural World Naked Gardening Day (WNGD)! People across the globe are encouraged, on September 10, 2005, 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.

"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 September 10, 2005, 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 second Saturday of each September.


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)

[Ben E Lou]

Oh, and TRUST ME when I say...

No pix pls k thx.

[Kodos]

Just be careful with your hoes!

[Airhog]

I used to do this every year, until a close call with some shearers...

[Kodos]

And for God's sake -- stay away from the Rototiller!

[Anthony]

sorry ben, no time to report on nude gardening day, too busy training for Nude Olypmics.