On the morning of Saturday, October 17, the stretch of Bartholomew Park beside the splash pad will fill up with something that has become a small tradition in this corner of East Austin: a neighborhood festival where the main attraction is a giveaway of living trees.
Austin Eco Fest runs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Bartholomew Park, and it is free and open to anyone who shows up. There is no gate, no ticket, no wristband. The event is hosted by the Windsor Park Neighborhood Association, and its centerpiece is a partnership with TreeFolks, the Austin nonprofit that has been planting across Central Texas since 1989.
TreeFolks will hand out hundreds of drought-tolerant native trees at the festival — tall shade trees and mid-size varieties meant to fit whatever yard a resident has. Austin residents are eligible to take home two trees each. The organization asks adopters to think about the "right tree, right place" question before choosing, so that a sapling planted in October has room to become a canopy in twenty years. TreeFolks also plans tree-planting demonstrations during the event, and the neighborhood association will have free mulch on hand, with bags to carry it home.
The tree giveaway is the hook, but the festival is built around it like a small county fair. Minor Mishap Marching Band will perform. The band describes itself as a "25-piece renegade circus-punk brass band" — Bourbon Street meets Budapest, in its own phrasing — known for black-and-yellow costumes, unamplified brass, and a willingness to climb on whatever furniture is available. The Austin Chronicle once wrote that the band's members parade around "like anarchist, psychotic bumblebees on Adderall," and that the vibe is celebratory enough that "even the crustiest curmudgeon would crack a grin."
Beyond the music, the festival will include tree climbing, kids' art projects, local food, and a fire truck on site for children to inspect. Environmental and climate organizations are expected to table at the event, among them the Sierra Club, Austin Climate Parents, and Bat Conservation International. Congressman Lloyd Doggett is expected to appear.
The origins of the festival are worth understanding, because they explain why a neighborhood association is giving away trees at all. Windsor Park is a mid-century neighborhood about six miles from downtown, established in the 1950s and made up of ranch-style homes, wide streets, and a diverse mix of longtime residents and newer arrivals. In recent years, the neighborhood association's climate committee began organizing around urban heat — the fact that Texas summers are getting hotter and that tree canopy, which provides shade and lowers ambient temperatures, is unevenly distributed across the city. Out of that work came Shade the Streets, a tree-adoption effort run in association with TreeFolks' NeighborWoods program and its partnership with the City of Austin and Austin Energy.
That effort has since grown into something larger. The Shade Alliance, as the coalition now calls itself, unites neighborhood groups across North and East Austin — Windsor Park, Pecan Springs-Springdale Hills, MLK, St. John's, East Cesar Chavez, and others — in what its organizers describe as a movement to cool the city from the ground up. According to the alliance, the coalition has helped get 2,000 trees adopted and planted on neighborhood streets and front yards in three years. Eco Fest is one of the biggest single-day expressions of that effort, and it is deliberately staged in a public park rather than a private venue, so that neighbors who have never signed up for anything can walk over and leave with a tree.
The festival has been held in different months in recent years — a 2025 edition was scheduled for November 1 — but the format has stayed consistent: free trees, free mulch, free music, and a park full of tables staffed by people who want to talk about the environment. The Windsor Park Climate Committee will lead a tree-identification tour of Bartholomew Park, the Enlivenment Committee will hand out seed clusters, and the Yard of the Month Committee will run a free plant swap. Local schools will bring activities. Surrounding neighborhoods, including Pecan Springs, MLK, East Cesar Chavez, St. John's, and North Loop, are invited to participate.
For anyone who cannot make it to the park, TreeFolks accepts sign-ups for home delivery of trees through its NeighborWoods program, so the giveaway does not end when the marching band packs up. But the point of the festival is the in-person version: a Saturday morning when a neighborhood turns a park into a place where native trees change hands, a brass band plays, and the only requirement for taking part is showing up.