Learn how to host an Earth Day celebration, with ideas for group gardening, potlucking, art creation, and more.
Earth Day is a unifying gathering that brings together all walks of life to celebrate our planet, activate change, and work together to build an abundant future. It’s a celebration of community and the environment around us. There is no better place to gather together and give back to the community than the garden!
Ready to dig in? Follow this step-by-step to bring Earth Day to life in your own community.
How to Host an Earth Day Celebration: Getting Started
Align Earth Day to your Existing Efforts
Earth Day is an opportunity to illuminate existing eco educational initiatives. Invite local schools, gardens, and community members to join together for hands-on workshops, nourishing meals, and gardening.
Choose a Garden
Community gardens are at the cornerstone of our modern village. Ask your local gardeners about schools, libraries, and organizations about potential sites.
Invite Your Community
Reach out to family, friends, and neighbors through newsletters, postering at local shops, and going door-to-door!
Create the Program
Earth Day is about celebration! Below is our proposed Earth Day activities to rejuvenate yourself, your community garden and your community. Grow Food. Eat Together. Make Art.

Grow Food
Building Community Around the Garden
Organize on-site workshops where folks from the neighborhood can get their hands dirty weeding, harvesting, and watering. Simple solutions really can create big changes.
Garden Activities
With soil, sun, water, and a few reimagined resources, you can reinvigorate your community garden in collaboration with the neighborhood. Every harvest is a meaningful opportunity to savor the season with friends and family.
How to Participate if You Don’t Have a Garden
Don’t have a garden? Try your hand at creating a mobile container garden or gather together community at a neighborhood park to inspire reconnection to the natural world.
Eat Together
Create a Waste-Free Feast
When we gather together to break bread and share platters of vegetables sourced from our favorite farmer, the where of what we eat is just as important as the how. Feasting with friends doesn’t have to mean stocking up on single use plates and paper napkins.
So bring a little more beauty to your life by focusing on a waste-free feast. Invest in a gorgeous glass carafe for herbal tea and check out your local hardware store to scoop up lovely Mason Jars to take the place of Dixie Cups. A smattering of cloth napkins is an elegant antidote to paper and scoring a few extra plates, forks, and spoons from your neighborhood consignment shops means there is no need to turn to the plastic junk at the party store. These small details make a gathering truly special and sustainable.
Set a Seasonally Inspired Table
Setting a table consonant with the season’s abundance is an easy way to infuse the everyday with magic. Consider the following suggestions a blueprint for building a better party.
- Gather together friends and family to craft simple arrangements from native flowers.
- Reusable glass jars filled with tangles of spring herbs invite conversation and inspire reverence for the natural world.
- Use wooden boards to serve delicate spring green tapenades and local cheeses.
Cultivate Community
A potluck is an easy way to share the harvest and nourish community. Invite friends with kitchen chops to join you in making more complicated dishes and encourage guests who aren’t as experienced to bring a simple side dish, sauce, or salad. Everyone should have a place at the table!
Make Art
Creative Projects for Children of All Ages
Family-friendly projects for Earth Day include a tie dye station, block printing, and making seed balls. Set up a kid’s corner with pillows, blankets, and a smattering of coloring books and create a music station with instruments that will invite every participant to join in a jam session or share a song.
Community-Based Creativity
Reach out to local makers, musicians, muralists, and movers to share their skills. Art is a vital part of healing our relationship to the land so dig into the act of co-creation.
Stay Connected
Share Your Story
Share your story with us on Instagram by using #weareearthday to tag photos from your thriving Earth Day Festival!
Keep in Touch
Earth Day really is every day! To continue to stay engaged and inspired, follow us @theecologycenter or check our our website theecologycenter.org for resources and recipes. You can also sign up online to receive our latest ‘zine “How To Make Earth Day Every Day.”
Evan Marks is founder of the The Ecology Center, a non-profit eco-education center focused on creative solutions for thriving on Planet Earth. The Center works to inspire communities around simple solutions that empower individuals everywhere to be part of the solution. Follow The Ecology Center on Instagram and Facebook to learn about what you can do to build a thriving world.
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