January/February 2000 issue

Notes From River Farm

Angels in the Garden: River Farm’s Interns
by Janet Walker

If you could draw a picture of our intern program here at River Farm, it would make an appropriate icon for what AHS is all about: getting more people more closely in touch with plants. This is what we do for our interns when we introduce and add them to our ranks, and it’s what they do for us when we put them to work. As in all healthy relationships, there is focus and mutual benefit.

In terms of the particular internships we offer—currently six—our program is and has been somewhat mercurial because available funding and the specific areas in which we need the support of an intern at a given time have changed from year to year. The result has been a program that is both flexible and adaptable—valuable attributes in an evolving organism—but the lack of predictable financial support has made planning more difficult. We rely on a small but generous group of AHS members who have recognized the value of our intern program and donated specifically to it over the years. Take my word for it, the returns on this kind of investment are astronomical.

What we start out with is raw material of the highest quality: people who seek these positions simply because they love what we do and want to play a part. It becomes incumbent on us, then, to make sure that they do get a healthy taste of what, exactly, we’re about. For this reason, we are modifying the program so that no matter what tasks they may be assigned as the core responsibilities of their own internships, each of our interns will also spend substantial hands-on time working on our historic grounds, as well as regular stints responding to inquiries received via the Gardeners Information Service. In this way, on top of whatever else they may do for us and learn from us, they are guaranteed experience in gardening, educational outreach, and customer service: the very things that AHS and the staff here at River Farm were put here to do.

This approach is purposely eclectic. We have, after all, made an investment in our interns, and we want to keep them on our side and in our field. There seems no better means to this end than furnishing them with a comprehensive sampler of what we have to offer. If it was worth choosing as our life’s work, it’s worth passing on.

If any of you know deserving men or women considering careers in horticulture, I hope you will let them know about the internships available here at River Farm. Internship forms can be found on the Society’s Web site or obtained by calling or mailing a request. For more information click here.

After 12 years at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., Janet Walker came to River Farm last fall as director of horticulture. She lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, with her husband and two sons.