Garden Gnome Liberationists are individuals and groups advocating the "freedom" of garden gnomes, small decorative ceramic bearded characters, often by stealing them and moving them to new locations. The phenomenon and the liberationists have received substantial media coverage and been featured in films, television and local news stories. A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and subterranean lifestyle.

Reports of people claiming to have seen real, living gnomes have surfaced in several countries with major media outlets carrying stories about purported gnome sightings. Garden gnomes are small ceramic bearded characters (usually male) that are used as decoration in gardens and lawns. The first garden gnomes were made in Gräfenroda, a town known for its ceramics in Thuringia, Germany in the mid-1800s.

The garden gnome quickly spread across Germany and into France and England, and wherever gardening was a serious hobby. Currently, there are an estimated 25 million garden gnomes in Germany. It has been suggested by some scholars that the garden gnome is based on the Greco-Roman fertility god Priapus, whose statue was often found in ancient gardens.

According to folklore, garden gnomes were willing to help in the garden at night. When no one is around, the folklore suggests the garden gnomes awaken from their ceramic state and work on the gardens and lawns in which they reside. They are said in these stories to touch plant life with their magic causing flowers to bloom, leaves to change colors, and streams to saturate the soil surrounding the plants.

As modern-day garden gnome folklore developed and their popularity increased, the objects became the target of pranks, known collectively as gnoming. Gnoming activity includes the theft of garden gnomes for the alleged purpose of returning the inanimate garden gnomes "to the wild." In 2008, a 53-year-old French man in Brittany was arrested on suspicion of stealing as many as 170 garden gnomes.

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