Volunteer Opportunities

Looking for an opportunity to benefit the garden, your community and your environment? The work of the State Botanical Garden is made possible by the commitment of garden volunteers. They welcome and inform garden visitors, grow and maintain areas with garden curators and support the spectrum of classes and events held annually. Garden volunteers share a sense of care, generosity and duty. In return for their contribution, the garden strives to offer volunteers unique and fulfilling experiences in a setting unlike any other.

Why volunteer?

The garden is a wonderful place to make a contribution to your community, build social and professional contacts, increase knowledge and skills and add to personal growth. Volunteers play a key role in the success of the garden’s programs and in making visitors feel welcome. Volunteers contribute new and unique skills, ideas and experience to the organization.

Available volunteer areas

Volunteers contribute many hours in almost every garden department. New volunteers are interviewed and then placed according to the garden’s needs. As these needs change, other opportunities for volunteering become available. Please review the list of volunteer opportunities to determine your area of interest and then fill out an online application form.

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Botanical Guardians

The Botanical Guardians volunteer network has been described as the garden’s “hands and eyes across the state” by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Guardians who have received special training work alongside conservation professionals on a variety of projects including population monitoring, seed collecting and invasive species removal. Trusted volunteers help plant safeguarding populations for Georgia’s most imperiled plant species and help restore Georgia’s most critically rare habitats. The garden always needs more volunteers and will provide training. The only requirements are that you are passionate to learn and promise to keep site locations of rare plants a secret.

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Georgia Master Gardener Program

The mission of the Georgia Master Gardener Extension Volunteer Program is to assist University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Cooperative Extension by training individuals to provide unbiased horticultural information through volunteer community service and educational gardening projects using applied research and university resources. If you are in the Athens area, the local Georgia Master Gardener Extension Volunteer Program is coordinated by the Athens-Clarke County Cooperative Extension office. Classes are held at the State Botanical Garden. Applications are available July 1st each year and are due no later than November 1st for consideration for the following year’s class.

Get more information or apply online »