Seattleites garden naked to mark a holiday that started in their own backyard

World Naked Gardening Day, which this year falls on May 3, started with three Seattleites in a Shoreline living room 20 years ago trying to answer a simple question: How could they get more people in the city comfortable with non-sexualized nudity?

Mark Storey, his wife, Kathy Blanchard, and their friend, Daniel Johnson, were looking through results from a poll that asked people, “What do you daydream about doing naked?”

The top response by far was swimming. But “skinny dipping” immediately excludes people who aren’t near water, as well as those who can’t swim, or those who fear little fishies, especially when taking the plunge in their birthday suits.

The second most popular response was hiking naked, but that option also leaves out people who don’t have the capacity to hike.

Naked gardening came in third.

“And we got to thinking, anybody can garden, as long as we understand gardening as potting plants indoors in a Manhattan apartment all the way to doing brush work on Mount Si,” Storey said. “At first, it was all kind of funny, and then we just backed off and watched it happen.”

What happened is World Naked Gardening Day blossomed into an internationally observed event. The holiday has no official public events, and no organizing group controls it. But those who take part are invited to share PG-rated photos, with leaves and flowers placed in appropriate spots. A Facebook page marking the event has almost 9,000 followers. Hundreds of people posted photos with the hashtag “#wngd” in 2024.

While the popularity of the holiday has grown over the last two decades, no one knows exactly how many people take part.

That is by design, Storey said.

“We decided from the very get go, we'd never make money or spend money on it,” he said. “We just wanted to see if there was power in gardening and power in social nudity enough to make this thing go forward. And it's 20 years later, and it's just bizarre how popular it seems to be around the world. It's been quite satisfying.”

This year, Seattle came in second in the U.S. on LawnStarter’s “2025’s Best Cities for Naked Gardening,” behind only Miami.

The lawn services website used 11 metrics, including nudist populations, public nudity laws, Google search interest, and the forecast for Saturday, May 3, to rank the 500 biggest U.S. cities to determine the best urban locales to, as they put it, “let it all hang out among the hedges.”

The worst city in which to garden naked, according to LawnStarter — Hammond, Indiana.

For anyone in the Seattle area thinking about taking up spades and rakes in their natural state, Saturday’s forecast calls for a chance of rain in the early morning, followed by cloudy skies, with temperatures topping off at a nippy (sorry) 57 degrees around 4 p.m.

Storey is a philosophy professor at Bellevue College and an editor at Nude & Natural Magazine. He has written books about the history of nudist film and naked theater. He even authored a scholarly article about whether people who like to get naked should be referred to as “nudists” or “naturists.”

“Both acknowledge the inherent goodness of the human body. Both recognize the value and embrace the joy of being and appearing fully human among a diverse community of old and young, light and dark, male and female,” Storey writes. “And both seek to promote and defend opportunities for all humans to experience this.”

In his own life, Storey actively “walks his talk” by gardening naked in his yard. He even gardens in the nude in Seattle city parks, which he is careful to do early in the mornings, when he’s not likely to run into other people or get arrested.

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Seattle has liberal laws when it comes to being naked in public. It is legal to be nude, as long as people don’t engage in lewd behavior or make others uncomfortable.

The city’s right to bare all is most evident during the summer at clothing-optional beaches such as Denny-Blaine Park and Hidden Beach at Howell Park. If you want to get naked, paint your body, and ride a bike, that’s also an option, during the Fremont Solstice Parade June 21.

As for Storey, his Shoreline neighbors are familiar with his gardening tendencies and often ask him to put some clothes on, if they stop by.

“And I do, because I like my neighbors,” he said.

Storey insists that his own nudity is more of a personal preference than a political statement. He believes that getting comfortable with one’s body in an outdoor setting is liberating and healthy.

“I'm not suggesting people go out and offend people. I'm suggesting they find a safe, hopefully legal place where they can do a little gardening, where they're not going to bother anybody, and just see what it feels like,” he said. “Just 15 minutes of some naked gardening, it will adjust your mind.”

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