By Aisling Maki - The Daily News -

Shelby Farms Park is gearing up to celebrate Earth Week 2011 in a big way, starting with Sunday’s Down to Earth Festival, expected to draw as many as 20,000 visitors over the course of the day if the weather cooperates.

The annual celebration, now in its fifth year, hopes to draw crowds to one of the nation’s largest urban parks with live music on two stages, local food, children’s crafts and play area, park tours and hikes, environmental art and green exhibitors.

“Down to Earth Festival is really just an opportunity for the community to come together and celebrate nature, the outdoors and environmental stewardship, and local companies who are doing environmentally conscious work,” said Shelby Farms Park communications director Jen Andrews. “And it’s also for people to just come out and have fun at the park that they love.”

The festival has also attracted sponsorship from FedEx, AutoZone, Whole Foods Market, First Tennessee Foundation, Hyde Family Foundation, International Paper and Smith & Nephew.

Although Down to Earth will be held in the same general area as it has in the past, the activities this year have been moved down to the shores of Patriot Lake, which Andrews said will be “an exciting new setting. It’s going to look and feel a little bit different, and we think that’s going to be fun.”

Demonstrations will include beekeeping and birds of prey, and expert-led guided hikes focused on mammalian ecology, aquatic ecosystems, amphibians and horticulture will be offered to the public, as will park tours available in English, Spanish and Mandarin.

Sunday’s festivities will also include SkyFest, a kite festival featuring kite-making in the kid zone, wind surfing, a birds of prey demonstration and more.

Festival admission is free, but the park will be taking donations for car parking. To make this year’s event even more environmentally friendly, the park is offering bicycle valet parking for cyclists riding into the park from the Shelby Farms Greenline or the Wolf River Greenway.

On April 21, Shelby Farms Park will host GreenShoe at the Lake, a cocktail party to be held under the stars at Patriot Lake, where work on a project to expand the body of water to twice its current size is slated to begin sometime over the next few years.

“We’re really hoping to capture a little bit more of the park and Greenline spirit, and shift the focus of the event a little bit,” Andrews said. “We moved the event to the shores of Patriot Lake to reflect our shifting focus because our next big master plan project is expanding Patriot Lake and creating an iconic urban lake.”

Formerly a $250-a-ticket formal bash called the GreenShoe Gala, this year the annual event is taking on a new vibe, an earthier feel and a ticket price that’s more affordable for park members.

“Over the years, we heard park users tell us that they really wanted to come and support the park because this is one of our biggest annual fundraisers, so we lowered the ticket price to make it more accessible,” Andrews said.

GreenShoe festivities will include lakeside dancing in the moonlight to music by the Andy Childs Band, and sampling of delicacies from an array or local restaurants, including Café Eclectic, Cheffie’s, Interim, River Oaks Grill and Sekisui Midtown.

“This year, instead of a seated dinner, we’re having what I’m calling ‘fancy tapas,’” Andrews said. “We’ve got local restaurants, most of them Project Green Fork certified, who will be serving some of their most popular dishes. So you’ll get to move around and sample from your favorite restaurants.”

On April 23, the park will host a members-only egg hunt for children at the new, sustainably built Woodland Discovery Playground, which celebrated its grand opening Friday.

In addition, Shelby Farms Park has partnered with other local organizations, including Memphis City Beautiful, Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis Hightailers Bicycle Club, Memphis Zoo and the University of Memphis to help support and promote other community events celebrating Earth Week.

“These are environmentally conscious, recreation or nature-themed events happening around the community that we’ve sort of put under our umbrella for Earth Week,” Andrews said. “There are a lot of fun events coming up.”

Dozens of Earth Week events, including cleanups, bicycle rides, 5Ks and fun runs, plant walks, and even a Guinness World Record cloth diaper-changing challenge, are listed at Shelby Farms Park’s Earth Week website, www.earthweekmemphis.com.