Sunnylands Earth Day Family Day Brings Community and Nature Together in Rancho Mirage

Earth Day at Sunnylands: Celebrating Nature With the Community

When Earth Day comes around, plenty of places set out a few recycling bins and call it a day. Not Sunnylands. In Rancho Mirage, they took things up a notch this year, opening their lawns and lush gardens for a jam-packed Family Day that left locals with more than just a nice afternoon—they left with dirt under their fingernails, native plants in their hands, and a clearer sense of what it means to protect the Coachella Valley.

On April 20, 2025, from breakfast hours until early afternoon, families poured through the gates of the Sunnylands Center & Gardens. Admission was free, which isn’t always the case at places with so much perfectly landscaped real estate. From the start, a steady stream of visitors sampled interactive workshops, met local artists eager to share their take on desert inspiration, and watched children darting from one nature-based activity to another.

The focus of the day? The native landscapes that make this stretch of California unique—and the critical need to preserve them. Inside the gardens, expert-led guided tree tours helped curious folks tell their palo verde from their mesquite. Along the main pathways, local gardening clubs set up tables for plant and seed swaps. It wasn’t just a stick-a-couple-seeds-in-a-cup situation, either. People lugged home everything from drought-tolerant shrubs to desert wildflower seeds, getting real advice on how to make them thrive at home.

Hands-On Learning Sparks Environmental Curiosity

This was an event with a mission: make Earth Day hands-on, memorable, and actually useful for the next generation. Sunnylands staff and volunteers turned face-painting into lessons on pollinators and let kids dig into soil samples as they learned how roots hold the desert together. Instead of sitting through long lectures, families tested their knowledge with quizzes and games sprinkled around the gardens. These quick-fire challenges made learning about watersheds and native plant survival less about memorization and more about discovery.

Artists from the area, known for turning desert scenes into vibrant works, set up stations where guests tried their hand at painting with natural pigments pulled from the landscape. Native plant giveaways added a practical twist, sending families home not just with an appreciation for local species but the actual plants themselves, ready to root in their own backyards. The giveaways weren’t just for show—gardening experts explained how even small patches of desert-friendly plants help local pollinators find food and shelter, showing anyone with a flowerpot or patch of dirt how they could help support the larger ecosystem.

All around, you could feel the goal of the day: get people to slow down, pay attention, and remember that the Coachella Valley is something special. By the end of the event, dozens of families had learned something new, made a few friends, and left with the ingredients for starting their own patch of native plants—and maybe the start of a lasting connection with the desert around them.