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 contribute 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.
Contact Us About Volunteering
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 about learning and promise to keep the site locations of rare plants a secret. For more information, please contact garden@uga.edu.
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.