About the Roots & Wings Festival

Celebrating nature in our city.

The Roots & Wings Festival in Austin is an annual celebration that combines Arbor Day and Monarch Appreciation Day, bringing the community together to honor trees, butterflies, bees, neighborhood communities, and the beauty of nature. Nature has a profound impact on our well-being, and the festival emphasizes our interconnectedness with each other and our environment.

So, what exactly is the Roots & Wings Festival?

It's a yearly, city-wide event that celebrates trees, pollinators, and all aspects of nature. The festival is a dedicated to recognizing and appreciating the natural world in our local neighborhoods. By fostering connections within our community and with the local ecosystem, we aim to build a stronger and more resilient community.

Unlike a single event, the Roots & Wings Festival includes numerous community-led events taking place across Austin. These events highlight and celebrate various elements of our urban forest ecosystem, including trees, plants, fungi, soil health, pollinators, birds, bats, and more.

In 2023, the Roots & Wings Festival actively supported over 123 community-led events, reaching over 17,000 community members, both young and young at heart.

Event hosts apply to be part of the festival during the early summer and are notified of acceptance in mid-August. The Festival traditionally spans two to three weeks in late October. We are also able to offer a limited number of micro-grants to qualifying community events.

Join us in celebrating the Roots & Wings Festival all year long by visiting our Anytime Activities. Share your nature journey on social by tagging us @NatureCityATX and the hashtag #RootsandWingsATX.

The history of the Roots & Wings Festival

The Roots & Wings Festival began in 2018 as a city-wide event honoring decades of Arbor Day and Monarch Appreciation Day celebrations. By combining these events, the Planning Committee sought to recognize the interconnections of nature across our city.

In 2018 and 2019, the Festival was celebrated through a large event at Zilker Botanical Garden and with community-led pop-up events across Austin. Events featured belayed tree climbing, butterfly tagging, and nature crafts for all ages. In 2020, in response to the global pandemic, the Festival was celebrated through two weeks of virtual programming. 2021 and 2022 offered two weeks of community hosted events across Austin.

We hope that this year’s 6th Annual Roots & Wings Festival, happening from Wednesday, October 18 thru Sunday, November 5, allows you to connect more deeply to your neighbors and our communities natural spaces.

Attaining equitable access to nature

Having equitable access to nature in Austin, TX would mean that everyone (regardless of race, class, gender, age, language, transportation, resources, etc.) would be able to enjoy the beauty of nature and truly benefit from the many things that nature has to offer.

The City of Austin’s Equity Office refers to equity as giving “people what they need to get them where we want them to be,” unlike equality which refers to “giving the same to everyone regardless of context.” We, as the Roots & Wings Planning Committee, recognize that attaining equitable access to nature means acknowledging history and how it shows up in the present through inequities and injustices, even in the ways that different groups of people distinctly experience the outdoors, nature, and the environment.

We hope that the annual Roots & Wings Festival can help support all Austinites in connecting more deeply to their communities and to the nature that surrounds them.


Learn more:

We know that these lists do not represent every outdoors-related narrative for all persons. However, they may be a good start for exploring narratives that are oftentimes not represented in the mainstream or excluded altogether.

Acknowledging and honoring Indigenous Peoples and land

We acknowledge, with respect, that the land we live in, work on, and enjoy is land that Indigenous People have lived in, worked on, and enjoyed from before it was ever called Austin. In honoring and celebrating our land, trees, and pollinators, we wish to also honor and celebrate the Indigenous Peoples that have resided, thrived, and taken care of the land here, now and before us.

Learn more about Indigenous People in the Austin-area and read the full Roots & Wings Festival Land Acknowledgement.

Thank you to the Roots & Wings Festival Partners

The Roots & Wings Festival would not be possible without the generous support of partners across our community.

City of Austin

Community Partners

Official Festival Photographer