Earth Day 2025
Date
There are no future occurrences of this event.
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This Earth Month, celebrate the planet with NHM at our annual Earth Day Festival! Join us in the Nature Gardens for our annual Earth Day festival on Saturday, April 19 with live musical performances, hands-on activities, up-close encounters with behind-the-scenes Museum collections, a Science of SpongeBob exploration with help from our partners at Nickelodeon, and so much more!
Program Schedule
Ongoing Programs
Museum Collections
View collection displays from NHM’s Entomology, Herpetology, Ichthyology, Marine Biodiversity Center, Polychaetes departments and the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum.
SpongeBob’s DNA DISCO!
Groove with the NHM DISCO crew! Explore SpongeBob’s biodiverse world with our hand-powered DNA machine in partnership with Nickelodeon Our World.
Meet SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star
Get your camera ready to snap a pic with your porous pal! From 12–1pm there will be a special appearance by Bill Fagerbakke and Carolyn Lawrence, the iconic voices of Patrick Star and Sandy Cheeks!
Plant and Succulent Sale (while supplies last)
Purchase your very own plants and succulents to care for and help support local small businesses (Annandale Garden Center, LA Succulents, Latinx with Plants).
Chat with visiting exhibitors:
HeadCount
HeadCount will be registering voters and helping folks double check if their registration status is correct and up to date, as well as answering any voting-related questions.
Lil’ Libros celebrates cultural diversity and bilingual literature in English and Spanish to ignite the imaginations of children everywhere!
Timed Programs
10 am–2 pm | Native Seed Balls (while supplies last)
Support your local pollinators with native seed balls! Get hands-on and make your own to help our neighborhood insects thrive.
10am–3pm | Garden Activity (while supplies last)
Learn about the plants growing in our gardens from NHM’s Horticulture team and receive some seeds to take home!
10:30am | Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Monarch Butterflies
Join speaker Susie Vanderlip, a Monarch Conservation Specialist, to learn all there is to know about Monarch butterflies.
10:30 am & 11:30 am | Ocean Encounters (additional paid admission is required)
Dive into a prehistoric undersea adventure with our brand new, live performance starring life-size sea creature puppets. Join us as our amazing puppeteers and paleontologists bring these extinct animals to life.
11 am, 1 pm & 3 pm | Masanga Marimba Performances
Enjoy the music of Masanga Marimba as they perform traditional and popular music from Africa and Latin America!
11:30 am | Lil’ Libros Book Signing (limit one per family; while supplies last)
Join Lil’ Libros author Emma Garcia to get a free signed copy of her book, My First 100 Ocean Words.
12 pm & 2 pm | Discover Your Planet Talks
Discover how NHM contributes to new and cutting edge research. Meet real scientists as they give you a glimpse into what our collections can reveal about life on our planet. Each program will be 15-20 minutes.
What are the topics for these programs? Read more below!
1–5 pm | Special Species Art Activity
Join the art team Special Species and help decorate the new seasonal animal that will be on view in the “A Delicate Moment in Time” art display in the Reframing Dioramas exhibit.
Pop-up Programs:
Live Animal Meet & Greets
Join NHM's Living Collections as they share wonderous wild animals from around the world and even from your neighborhood!
Performing Arts Pop-ups
Keep a lookout for our Performing Artists as they bring nature to life through art.
Learn more about Earth Day participants!
Masanga Marimba
Masanga Marimba performs traditional and popular family-friendly music from Africa and Latin America on giant marimbas from Zimbabwe along with vocals, drums, percussion, trumpet and saxophone. The word "Masanga" comes from an African word that means the coming together of rivers or roads representing the meeting of African, Latin, and American traditions in this group.
Susie Vanderlip is Monarch Conservation Specialist in Southern California for Monarch Watch.
She is a professional speaker, inducted into the NSA Speakers Hall of Fame, and shares about
monarch butterfly life cycle, conservation, and habitat. Her signature talk, Everything You Ever
Wanted to Know About Monarch Butterflies, incorporates science and art, using beautiful
photographs and engaging videos taken in her Orange, California garden where she has raised and
photographed hundreds of monarchs. Susie is the author and illustrator of the award-winning
children’s storybook, The Story of Chester, the Monarch Caterpillar/Larva, about Monarch life
cycle, available on Amazon and for purchase today.
Alberto Cruz
Alberto is a Mexican paleontologist that works at the La Brea Tar Pits on small animals including toads, frogs, turtles, lizards, and snakes. He is currently working on a project to infer the environment during the Pleistocene of Talara, Peru; it is an asphaltic site with the presence of megafauna and small animals like in Rancho La Brea.
Austin Baker
A postdoctoral researcher working in the Entomology Collection at the NHMLAC. The California Insect Barcoding Initiative is a collaborative effort to sequence “DNA barcodes” of all insect species in California, and Austin is managing the field collections part of this project. He received a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of California, Riverside where he studied the systematics of ant-parasitizing wasps in the family Eucharitidae and then did a postdoc at the University of Memphis studying the phylogeny of crickets and katydids. His research interests include insect systematics, biodiversity, evolution, and natural history.
A team of three artists working as a collective—RFX1 (Jason Chang), Joel Fernando, and Yesenia Prieto—have created an installation in a habitat diorama hall at NHM as part of the exhibition, Reframing Dioramas: The Art of Preserving Wilderness. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of NHM’s diorama halls, the exhibition explores the complicated history and unique artistry of the habitat diorama and is presented in a newly restored diorama hall that has been closed to the public for decades.
A wholesale plant nursery that is open to the public, specializing in a variety of plants from California Natives to Hedges, Vines, Succulents and more. Annandale Garden Center has served the local neighborhood of Eagle Rock and surrounding LA area for over 30 Years!
HeadCount
HeadCount is a non-partisan organization that uses the power of music to register voters and promote participation in democracy. We reach young people and music fans where they already are - at concerts and online - to inform and empower.
Website: headcount.org
Instagram: @headcountorg
LA Succulents is a nursery in the San Fernando Valley that specializes in unique and unusual cactus, succulents and hoya.
Latinx with Plants: A small woman of color owned business in Boyle Heights whose focus is to uplift people of color in the plant world. We hope that through plant parenthood, people will be able to deepen their connection with nature and tune into the healing that caring for plants can offer us.
Instagram: @latinxwithplants
Lil’ Libros celebrates cultural diversity and bilingual literature in English and Spanish to ignite the imaginations of children everywhere!
Instagram: @lil_libros
Horticulture Team
The Museum has a dedicated staff of horticulturalists that oversee the care and maintenance of our gardens. The Nature Gardens has over 600 kinds of plants, including California natives and others from around the world, that are home to a variety of birds, butterflies, lizards, squirrels, and more! This amazing team enjoys sharing their love for horticulture and gardens with the local community.
Follow Nature Gardens on Instagram @nhmla_naturegardens
Living Collections
Did you know the museum has a team of professional animal keepers on site 365 days a year? They take excellent care of all animals on exhibit and behind the scenes at the museum, utilizing the natural history expertise of our scientists as well as our veterinarian, who advises on any medical and nutritional needs. Because even a frog needs a doctor sometimes. We have around 15-25 species of vertebrates, and 70-100 species of invertebrates at any given time.
Follow Living Collections on Instagram @nhmla_liveanimals
Museum Educators
The Museum Educator team at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County are the knowledgeable staff that enhance the visitor experience through personal interaction. Through research and training, Museum Educators create and facilitate educational programs for general museum visitors, for school groups, and for special events, both in-person and virtual.
Performing Arts
The team behind the Performing Arts department at the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County creates live theatrical performances based on our exhibits, research, collections, and events. Learn more about this unique program HERE.
Research and Collections
The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County protect and share more than 35 million specimens and artifacts, the largest natural and cultural history collection in the western United States. The Research and Collections Department is the research institution within the museums. They create new knowledge through academic scholarship in history and science. Visitors can get up close to these fascinating objects and specimens, which are sometimes displayed in exhibitions and during museum events.
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