Rooted in Environmental Stewardship

As it starts to get warmer (and then cooler and then warmer again), you may have started to notice the green leaves creeping back onto once barren branches in parks, medians, and neighborhoods across Oklahoma City. Maybe the calls of cardinals and robins have started waking you up in the morning. Or, maybe you’ve heard increased buzzing around the city’s pollinator gardens, telling you that spring is, in fact, here to stay.

April is one of the busiest months for Oklahoma City Beautiful. The local nonprofit facilitating environmental stewardship and advocacy amongst Oklahomans sees increased volunteering and engagement throughout the month. They match this heightened interest with increased programming and, of course, their iconic late-April celebration, Earth Fest.

This spring, though, has been especially busy. In January, the group moved their headquarters from Classen Boulevard to a bigger, more permanent spot in Metro Park. “We had outgrown the office space that we had been leasing for several decades,” said Executive Director Natalie Evans, discussing the growth of the organization. “We needed more space to store vehicles, trees, equipment and tools.”

But, the move offers more than just increased storage space. “We are in the process of developing this two-acre site,” explained Evans. “We are working on raising the funding to purchase the land right now so that we can start doing some more things to become a little bit more self-sufficient in our programming.” The larger spot will allow OKC Beautiful to teach classes, grow plants and saplings for distribution, maintain pollinator gardens, and engage the community onsite. “We’re calling it the Community Roots Center,” said Evans, excitedly. “We really want this to be a community space that’s used for education and expanding our mission.”

At over 60 years old, OKC Beautiful was established in 1962 as the Mayor’s Beautification Council. The council’s inception reflected a broader, national movement towards improving environmental quality of life for urban Americans. In 1971, OKC Beautiful became its own nonprofit organization.

As the American environmental movement evolved, so did OKC Beautiful. With the Clean Air Act of 1970, the organization led local initiatives to discourage burning trash. When recycling entered the popular lexicon, OKC Beautiful facilitated paper recycling throughout the city.

As the millennium approached, their programming began to grow in both ideology and reach. “The early 1990s was really when our youth education started to evolve,” explained Evans. “We recognized that, yes, we can go and pick up litter, but if we aren’t preventing it in the first place, it’s just an endless battle.” Since then, education has become a cornerstone of OKC Beautiful’s mission and day-to-day operations.

1992 saw the creation of the Mother Earth Program, which engages OKC students with a play and lessons on how to care for the Earth with habits like picking up litter, recycling, and conserving water. More recent years have seen the development of OKC Harvest, a program that provides regular hands-on learning and gardening experience to students at Wilson, Mark Twain, and Esperanza elementary schools.

Education has since expanded to include the broader community. “With the launch of our Grow OKC classes and our sustainability social hour, we’ve really looked at lifelong learning for community members,” said Evans. “One of our core values is empowerment; it’s a huge focus in our work.”

With each year, the organization continues to evolve alongside the environmental needs and interests of the OKC community, while still maintaining focus on its mission of environmental education and empowerment.

So, what does that programming look like today? “We operate about a dozen programs that fit within two broad buckets: environmental education, both in schools for youth and for the general community, and built environment, so planting trees, picking up trash, and establishing pollinator gardens,” explained Evans.

The programming spans wide, reflecting how broad, creative, and multi-faceted environmental stewardship can be. A prime example is the breadth of their classes: from raising chickens in your backyard, maintaining electric vehicles, foraging, using natural dyes, and mending clothes to the more traditional gardening, composting, and tree care classes.

And, these classes are popular. In 2025, OKC Beautiful saw over 5,000 participants in various education initiatives.

More broadly, the organization typically engages over 6,000 volunteers and reaches more than 20,000 youth and community members per year. “There’s so many unifying things in our work,” said Evans, discussing the engagement they see from the metro area. “I think, ultimately, everyone loves trees. No one likes litter. Some people might like trees because of heat mitigation and creation of habitat, and other people love trees for beautification and economic development.”

And, with Earth Day on the horizon, OKC Beautiful’s next two months are packed. “Spring is our biggest time of year for volunteer stewardship,” said Evans. “We have a lot of people doing LitterBlitz events –– our litter abatement program across the community. Our Adopt-A-Spot groups are doing a lot of spring planting and sprucing up parks and public spaces in the spirit of spring cleaning and Earth Day.”

But, the largest event is the nonprofit’s Earth Fest, happening on April 18 in Scissortail Park. The free, family-friendly festival will feature a vendor market, a mending station, a bike repair station, a thriving kids area, and live musicians. And, of course, a handful of classes throughout the day about different environmental topics.

Originally started as a cleanup in Scissortail Park, the event quickly expanded to include educational opportunities, tabling from other local environmental organizations, and overall celebration of our planet. Now celebrating its fourth birthday, Earth Fest has become a ripe illustration of OKC Beautiful’s commitment to community engagement through education and empowerment.

Want to get involved with OKC Beautiful beyond April? From tree planting to community cleanups, the nonprofit provides plenty of volunteer opportunities throughout the year. And, true to their emphasis on education, volunteer opportunities are intended to feel accessible. “We never want people to feel intimidated if they’ve never planted a tree or never worked in a garden before,” explained Evans. “We always instill education and training opportunities in our volunteer projects.”

Perhaps dirt is not your “thing.” Well, OKC Beautiful provides not-directly-tree-related volunteer options as well. “We have lots of volunteer opportunities for committee roles or helping tabling at events,” said Evans. “Whatever talents or skills people have, we can always find a way to leverage those in our work, too.”

But, as always, sometimes the most helpful actions are the simplest. With building the Community Roots Center alongside their myriad of other projects, donations go a long way with OKC Beautiful. “A lot of people think that we’re directly funded by the city of Oklahoma City for programming, and in reality, our funding comes primarily from grants and individual donations,” said Evans. “We really need community support to make our mission possible.”

Visit OKC Beautiful

This article appears in Celebrating 60 years of the Festival of Arts!.