Earth Day Festival to return to Brown Family Environmental Center

GAMBIER – The Brown Family Environmental Center (BFEC) will host Earth Day Festival on Saturday, April 16, from noon until 4 p.m. The event will feature hands-on, interactive workshops led by Kenyon organizations and community partners, such as the Gund Gallery and Ohio State University Extension Master Gardener volunteers, for nature sketching, DIY bluebird and bat house construction, seed-bomb making, and pond-play. There will also be live music and food trucks.

“We’re so excited to welcome the Kenyon and Knox County communities back to the BFEC to celebrate our first in-person Earth Day event since 2019,” said Ava-Rose Beech, Kenyon Class of 2021, a post-baccalaureate fellow at the BFEC. “We are so grateful to the many Kenyon and community partners who will be a part of the festival. We can’t wait for everyone to spend the day appreciating and engaging with the beauty of our local environment.”

Joan Maloof, professor emeritus at Salisbury University and founder of the Old-Growth Forest Network, will give a talk on how to preserve, protect and promote the country's few remaining stands of old-growth forest. The Old-Growth Forest Network is the only national network in the U.S. of protected, old-growth, native forests where people of all generations can experience biodiversity and the beauty of nature, according to the organization’s website.

The Brown Family Environmental Center, now in its 25th year, is a 500-acre preserve in the Kokosing River Valley of central Ohio with a mission to conserve natural diversity and engage people of all ages with nature. The BFEC also provides opportunities for education and research with its nine miles of trails, programming that is open and free to the public, and Kenyon College courses ranging from art to zoology.

Admission for the festival is free and open to the public. The BFEC is at 9781 Laymon Road in Gambier.