Many Hands Make a Garden

Fernbank Science CenterWhen any of the 33 volunteer gardeners at Fernbank Science Center in downtown Atlanta are working in the youth gardens, their top priority is to engage kids in what’s growing. That’s more important than picking up trash, pulling weeds, or watering newly planted seeds and seedlings—although volunteers handle all that stuff, too.

The kids and volunteers “dig things up and look at them. We see what an onion looks like when it’s growing. We pull off peas and open them up, look at the carrots,” says Trecia Neal, a biologist at the center, which is a public science institution encompassing demonstration gardens, a 68-acre old-growth forest, a planetarium, and an observatory devoted to scientific education; it is also part of the DeKalb County School System.

Thousands of kids in grades K-12 get some kind of educational interaction with the gardens every year, whether they attend a class given by Fernbank, visit with their classroom or daycare teacher, or drop in with their parents to this urban oasis.

Many of the kids have never seen where their food really comes from, says Neal. “We pinch off rosemary and let them smell it. Whenever volunteers are in the garden, they do that with the kids.”

In the nearly 20 years since Neal first recruited volunteers to create vegetable and habitat gardens in order to use the humus from a composting demonstration, she has worked with hundreds of volunteers and learned much about recruiting and retaining them.

Recruiting is relatively easy: advertise in local publications. But it’s been a while since Neal has even had to do that, because new volunteers have been coming to her lately.

“It’s very interesting that in these economic times we have had a huge increase in the number of people who are interested in volunteering,” says Neal. “People who are unemployed want to keep their resume current by doing something active.”

And what keeps volunteers coming back?

A sense of ownership, and the realization that giving to the garden can be therapeutic as well as fun, says Neal. Volunteers “have to be proud of what they’re doing and feel like it’s theirs. That’s what makes kids so excited about a garden, too.”

Involving Extension Master Gardeners in the gardens has worked very well, notes Neal. Since the Fernbank gardens are an “approved project” for the county’s Master Gardener (MG) program, at least two MGs are involved every year. Some of those Master Gardeners have been volunteering since the gardens opened. “They’re just my die-hard volunteers and I can always call them and they will be here,” she says.

As a general rule in volunteer efforts, a small handful of volunteers seem to end up doing the majority of the work. The Fernbank gardens are no exception. Of about 33 volunteers listed, 8 to 10 people form the core.

Making them all feel special is important, says Neal. Every quarter, there is some type of volunteer-appreciation event—a tea event or dessert, with a talk or some other kind of program. “They really, really like that,” says Neal. “Learning is very important, because a lot of these people are retired. In fact, I would say probably 80 percent of them are retired. So they are very knowledge-hungry. Especially gardeners—they just soak it up.”

The other lesson Neal has learned is to get out of the way and let the volunteers have total control. “If you want volunteers, they need to have ownership of the garden, because that’s what’s going to make them want to stay. I’m a control freak. When I was much younger, I controlled everything: ‘This is what we’re going to plant, and this is what we’re going to do.’ I had some unhappy volunteers and had some problems. So I learned the hard way and said to myself, ‘You can do it alone and have your perfect little world or you can have happy volunteers.’ I went with the happy volunteers.”

Yet there must be some organization and structure. First-time volunteer gardeners are likely to be overwhelmed if asked to make every single decision. At Fernbank, new volunteers are paired with veterans for their first few visits or until they feel comfortable. And there is a standard drill of to-dos every time a volunteer puts some time into the garden: sign in at the center, put your nametag on, get the key for the storage shed, pick up litter and debris around the garden, measure and record the temperature of each compost bin, add fresh material to the compost bins, turn and water the compost, remove weeds, harvest vegetables, deadhead flowering plants, replenish printed materials, clean the signs, and clean the pond. The volunteer crew also has a dry-erase board in the storage shed so they can leave notes for each other, for example, “collard seeds planted today, please water.”

On any given visit, a volunteer may not get to all the to-dos, especially if children visit, because “talk to kids” trumps every other task.

Neal has not had to deal much with difficult volunteers. “I’ve found in the gardening world that that’s pretty rare. Gardeners seem to be incredible people. I don’t know if it’s just the nature of the beast. [The activity is] so Zen that it attracts beautiful, wonderful people.”

This article was written by Lisa Duchene. Lisa is an environmental writer in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, and co-coordinator of the Bellefonte Community Children’s Garden.