This Earth Day — well, two days before Earth Day — on Saturday, April 20th, Shelby Farms Park invites all to celebrate the different ways of going green in Memphis at its annual free Earth Day Festival.
“We’re just excited to celebrate the Earth and Earth Day and to focus on sustainability and also just explore and learn in the park,” says Angie Whitfield, the park’s marketing and communications senior manager.
The day kicks off with a family-friendly, untimed, 2.34-mile fun run around Hyde Lake at 10 a.m. Registration is $22 per person and guarantees an exclusive fun run T-shirt. (Sign up to run here.)
But the fun run isn’t your only chance to get active at the park on Saturday.
“Also that day, we are kicking off our Get Outside! Fitness Classes, where we offer free fitness classes in the spring through the fall,” Whitfield says. “So there’ll be a preview of each one of the classes.”
That means adult yoga at 9 a.m., kids yoga at 9:30 a.m., mental fitness at 10 a.m., HIIT boot camp at 10:30 a.m., functional fitness for older adults at 11 a.m., mat Pilates at 11:30 a.m., and Kidokinetics sports fun at noon.
From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., more than 25 organizations will set up learning stations and booths to share their approaches to sustainability with interactive opportunities and activities.
“Park visitors and the folks at the festival can go by and learn and talk to the people there at the booths, learn what they’re doing, what their efforts are, and how to plug in to those organizations,” Whitfield says.
“That’s something important to us — to be able to highlight sustainability and partners where that’s one of their key missions. So we’re excited that they have decided to join forces with us. We like to say every day is Earth Day at the park, but we’ll take one day and have a big festival about it.”
Participating organizations include, among others, Clean Memphis, Compost Fairy, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Protect Our Aquifer, Sierra Club Chickasaw Group, and Shelby Farms Park Apiary. Most of them will also offer presentations on the event stage (full schedule below).
The festival will also have appearances by the park’s mascot Bob the Buffalo, a kids zone with inflatables, and lots of yard games, music, and food trucks. Rentals will be open that day for canoes, kayaks, paddle boats, stand up paddle boards, and bikes. Plus, Goat Yoga with 901 Goats will be offered at 1 p.m., 2:15 p.m., and 3:30 p.m. for $25 or $30 with a yoga mat rental. (Sign up for Goat Yoga here.)
As an added bonus, free mulch will be distributed in the southern area of the field west of Farm Road across from the S. Hyde Lake parking lot. Mulch must be loaded yourself and tools and removal equipment will not be provided.
For more information on Shelby Farms Park’s Earth Day Festival, visit here. If you’re looking for other Earth Day-forward activities and events this weekend, check out this blog post from our sister publication Memphis Magazine.
