Volunteers

The Gardens on Spring Creek encompasses 18 acres which include: Community Gardens, Children’s Garden, Garden of Eatin' (our latest garden addition and to be planted by June of 2009) Visitor Center, greenhouse, xeriscape garden, special events, as well as year-round youth and adult programs. With so much happening at The Gardens, volunteers are a valued and critical component in our daily operations as well as continued success.

We help volunteers reach their personal goals through diverse opportunities. Volunteers work with staff and gain knowledge as well as experience. The Gardens on Spring Creek offers the following: opportunities to meet new people, enjoyable work environment, facility to give back to the community, docent training, develop new skills, (horticulture, basic office support, and computer skills for example), attend volunteer only events, work with youth and adults, and tasks that benefit the community through continued development of The Gardens. We invite you to come grow with us!

We ask that volunteers wear closed-toed shoes for all outdoor volunteer projects including, but not limited to: Social Gardening and Eatin' Effort. Flip flops and sandals are not appropriate footwear and volunteers who arrive wearing them will not be allowed to participate in the day's projects. Tennis shoes, boots, or other closed-toed shoes are perfectly acceptable.

Please dress for the ever-changing Colorado weather. Layers work well and bring along a water bottle to stay hydrated.

Contact Connie Meyer, the volunteer coordinator, at 970-416-2482 or if you are interested in any of these opportunities. We have limited volunteer group size for Social Gardening and Eatin' Effot to 15 volunteers at a time due to staffing and our current tool inventory. We can accomodate larger groups, but prior arrangements must be made before the volunteer day.

New Volunteer Orientation

Current Volunteer Opportunities

We need assistance in:

• Garden of Lights Visitor Center Greeter - Join us for an even bigger and better Garden of Lights season. We need your help on December 4,5, 11, 12, 18, and 19 from 5 - 9pm. Greeters will welcome guests into the Visitor Center, provide direction to the lighting display, and assist staff.
• Composting - Finished for the season. This opportunity resumes Spring of 2010. Volunteers needed to help maintain our compost bins. If you are new to composting and would like to learn how, we can teach you. Composting is a natural process and our involvement helps speed up the process. By composting garden waste, we keep materials out of the landfill and are able to provide our gardens with a natural compost. Volunteers can help us by turning the piles (generally 3'x 3' in size or smaller) and watering them to keep the piles moist. This is an every other week commitment.
• Birthday Parties - Finished for the season. This opportunity resumes Spring of 2010. Volunteers needed to host our youth birthday parties. Volunteers will lead a brief tour of the Children's Garden (about 10 minutes), pointing out fun features to the children. Volunteers will then show children how to plant a flower in a pot as each child gets to pot up a plant and take it home with them. Parents are asked to stay. Once the tour and planting are done, Mom and Dad then take over the party.
• Youth Tours - Volunteers needed to help lead youth tours. Tours are split into smaller groups so each volunteer hosts an area at the Gardens on Spring Creek, such as the greenhouse, Children's Garden, lead a planting activity, or our classroom.
• Social Gardening - Finished for the season. This opportunity resumes Spring of 2010. Volunteers needed to help with Social Gardening. This groups meets on Wednesday mornings at 8:30am at The Gardens. Volunteers help with planting projects and summer garden maintenance in our gardens. This program is designed so people work for a while, take a refreshment break so they can socialize with other gardeners, and then work for a little while longer. Summer hours are 9:00am - 11:30am on Wednesdays.
• Eatin' Effort - Finished for the season. This opportunity resumes Spring of 2010. Volunteers needed to help with our newest garden. Volunteers will help plant, maintain, and harvest in this 3/4 of an acre edible garden; dedicated to fruits, vegetables, and herbs. We truly want to provide education, information, and demonstration from seed to plate for our garden patrons. The produce harvested from this garden will be donated to the Food Bank of Larimer County, our way of giving back to the community. At this point, our conservative estimate is 5,000 - 10,000 pounds of produce this season alone. This volunteer program meets on Friday mornings from 9:00am - noon.
• Greeter - Volunteers needed for Saturdays. The day is split into two shifts, 9:00am - 12:30pm and 12:30pm - 4:00pm and volunteers can rotate Saturdays, but we do ask for at least one shift per month. Greeters welcome garden patrons, inform visitors of special events/current happenings/classes and literature, and direct people to various gardens.

We have periodic needs for the following areas:

Horticulture:

• Greenhouse – seeding, transplanting, weekend watering, pot washing, integrated pest management, inventory control

Education:

• Youth Programs – instructor assistant and outreach education opportunities.

Special Events:

Volunteers help as needed at specific times during the year. Events include, but are not limited to: Compost Festival, Harvest Festival, spring plant sale, Bike-n-Jazz, Trains in The Gardens, Down and Dirty: Urban Garden Festival, open houses, birthday party host, Enchanted Halloween, Thanksgiving Holiday Gift Sale, December Poinsettia sale, and Holiday of Lights.

Administrative:

Data entry, filing, mailings, fund raising, web-based research, create database for plant collections, create plant labels.

Marketing:

Assistance with creation of program materials, flyers, brochures, graphic design, illustrations, newsletters, (and distributing items to local businesses), and publishing.

Construction:

Carpenter for wood projects (as needed) which may include: design, construction, and installation of interior and garden related structures and features. Minor maintenance of buildings and grounds are also needed.

• Volunteer Waiver (PDF 7KB)

• Volunteer Application (PDF 144KB)

Applications are considered for volunteering positions for which they have applied without regard to race, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability and other characteristics protected by law.