Earth Day and Arbor Day Celebration — Sebastian, Florida

The Sebastian Earth Day and Arbor Day Celebration is held on a Saturday in April at Riverview Park, and the 2026 edition ran April 18, 2026, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

The City of Sebastian gives the 2026 date, hours and place as Riverview Park, 600 US Highway 1 (City of Sebastian event page). The same day appears on the city list of Signature Events for the 2025 to 2026 fiscal year, between the Easter Egg Hunt and Movie Night on April 3, 2026 and the Summer Kickoff Concert on June 5, 2026 (City of Sebastian Signature Events). That places Earth Day among the handful of city produced dates on the riverfront calendar, alongside Kids Fest, the Halloween Costume Contest and the July 4 Freedom Fest.

The Saturday shifts from year to year, but it has stayed close to April 22. Recent dates were April 24, 2021, April 23, 2022, April 26, 2025 and April 18, 2026. The 2025 celebration ran 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Sebastian Daily, April 2025), an hour longer than the 2026 schedule. As of October 10, 2026, the city had not posted a 2027 date, so the Natural Resources Board page on the city site is the place where the next date appears first.

The Riverview Park celebration is a free environmental fair with exhibits from conservation groups, food and retail vendors, children's activities, live music, raffles and an art show and sale.

The city describes the event as a community celebration of all things environmental, with live entertainment, food and retail vendors, family-friendly activities and environmental organizations (City of Sebastian). Photo captions from the 2025 event on the city page show who sets up tables on the lagoon front: the Florida Wildlife Hospital, the Master Gardeners, ORCA, the Pelican Island Audubon Society, Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, the city stormwater department and a native butterfly flower sale.

Sebastian Daily listed the 2025 highlights as nonprofit and environmental groups, local small businesses and food vendors, a Sebastian River Art Club art show and sale, a buffered shoreline planting with the Ocean Research and Conservation Association, eco-themed kids activities, live entertainment and raffles (Sebastian Daily). The shoreline planting is the one hands-on habitat task of the day; volunteers put native species into the bank along the Indian River Lagoon edge of the park.

Earlier programs show how the format has grown. In 2021 the city promised over 40 local food and retail vendors, a digital scavenger hunt, a Tai Chi demonstration for World Tai Chi Day, the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute marine mammal ambulance and Indian River County's Sea Turtle Conservation Program (Vero News, April 15, 2021). The 2022 release named Keep Indian River Beautiful, St. Sebastian River State Park, Pelican Island Audubon Society and the FDEP Aquatic Preserves Program among exhibitors (Vero News, April 4, 2022).

On celebration morning Waste Management runs paper shredding and electronic recycling at the Riverview Park overflow lot and a large household item drop-off at the Barber Street Sports Complex, both from 9 a.m. to noon.

The City of Sebastian schedules the Waste Management Recycling and Spring Cleaning Event from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. during the celebration, with shredding and electronics in the overflow parking lot on the south side of Riverview Park (City of Sebastian). The city warns that the longest wait times are between 9 and 10 a.m., and Sebastian Daily advised in 2025 that arriving after 10 a.m. avoids the peak.

Bulky items go elsewhere. The spring cleaning drop-off for large household items is at the Barber Street Sports Complex, which Sebastian Daily placed in the football field parking lot off Tulip Drive (Sebastian Daily). In 2025 and again in 2026 the city partnered with BikeWalk IRC to collect gently used bicycles for its Bike Rehab Program, and Waste Management takes the bicycles that cannot be refurbished.

Shredding has been part of the April date for years. Both the 2021 and 2022 Vero News releases led with a residential electronic recycling and shredding event, so the drop-off has become one of the practical reasons Sebastian households mark the date even if they skip the exhibits.

Arbor Day is folded into the Sebastian celebration because an Arbor Day observance and proclamation is one of the four standards that keep Sebastian a Tree City USA, a title it has held 24 years in a row.

The Arbor Day Foundation named Sebastian a 2025 Tree City USA, the 24th consecutive year for the city, together with a Growth Award for expanded urban forestry work, according to Sebastian Daily on January 9, 2026. To qualify, a community keeps a tree board or department, adopts a tree ordinance, spends at least $2 per capita on forestry and holds an Arbor Day event. Sebastian Daily's report on the 2023 designation spelled out the last standard as conducting an Arbor Day event and proclamation (Sebastian Daily).

The proclamation is read at the park. The 2021 celebration opened at 9 a.m. with a Mayoral Proclamation, and the 2022 celebration opened with a City Council Proclamation; the 2022 release also marked 20 years of Sebastian as a Tree City USA (Vero News, 2022).

Riverview Park is also where the city has put its tree money into the ground. In January 2021, Sebastian Daily reported the city's second consecutive Growth Award and quoted city staff describing mulching and native planting around a group of trees at Riverview Park and moving a pathway away from tree groupings to protect them (Sebastian Daily, January 6, 2021).

The Natural Resources Board, a City of Sebastian advisory board, organizes the celebration with city staff, and its Living Dock project has used the event to fasten oyster mats to waterfront pilings.

The board's stated mission is to improve the quality of life in Sebastian by protecting, preserving and promoting natural resources. It meets on the first Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. in City Council Chambers and lists 7 members and 2 alternates (Natural Resources Board). Its members champion the Sustainable Sebastian Program, which City Council supported through Resolution R-19-30, and the 2021 celebration was the public launch of that initiative, with free canvas tote bags for the first 200 families (Vero News, 2021).

The Living Dock grew out of the city's Community Oyster Garden, a cost-share grant project with the Indian River Lagoon Council that drew nearly 300 participants between July 2018 and October 2019. During the 2021 and 2022 Earth Day and Arbor Day Celebrations, volunteers and city leadership helped board members install a Living Dock on the Sebastian waterfront, tying plastic mats with oyster shells around dock pilings to promote the growth of oysters and other filter feeders; at the 2023 celebration volunteers made more mats for later deployments (Community Oyster Garden).

The 2022 release described the day as a free outreach event for environmental education and said it is not a for-profit or fundraising event, which separates it from the Rotary and Clambake festivals that use the same Riverview Park lawn to raise money.

Sebastian's April celebration has run at Riverview Park since at least 2011, moving from a morning festival with fishing clinics and contests to a full-day fair built around recycling, oyster habitat and Tree City USA.

In January 2011, Vero News announced the city's Earth Day/Arbor Day celebration for Saturday, April 23, in Riverview Park from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Vero News, 2011). Two years later the Earth Day Festival and Arbor Day observance ran Saturday, April 20, 2013, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the corner of US 1 and County Road 512 (Vero News, April 17, 2013).

The 2013 program leaned toward youth and the river. The Kids Hooked on Fishing clinic for ages 6 to 16 started at 8 a.m. at the docks east of the park, the first 80 registered children received a free rod and reel, and visitors voted on the most creative birdhouse, the best item made from recycled materials and a wildlife photography contest. The later format, with Waste Management drop-offs and the Living Dock, dates from the 2021 and 2022 releases and the city's current event page.