Horticulture Assistant

 

 

Purpose: To enhance the educational and aesthetic quality of the museum's horticultural exhibits, landscape and displays.

Duties: 

Assist Horticulture staff with:

• Maintenance and propagation of nonnative and native plants in greenhouses, nurseries, animal exhibits, lobbies, ponds to include fertilization, labeling, organizing, pest control, plant inspection and removal, pruning, repotting, seedling care, soil preparation, watering and weeding.
• Maintenance of outdoor landscape including display beds, exterior animal exhibits, parking/bus lots, and wetlands in boardwalk region to include debris removal, fertilization, mulching, pest control, plant inspection and removal, planting, pruning, raking, seedling care, watering and weeding.
• Ensuring that adequate inventory of plant needs is maintained, advising staff when supplies are low.

• Twice-yearly Native Plant Sale fundraisers, either on days of the sales &/or on days preceding. Duties  include typing/printing labels, attaching labels to tags, tagging plants, researching/typing information for sale handout, xeroxing flyers/handouts, printing/cutting plant signs, making boxes, setting up plants/register/signs/tables, transporting plants to customer vehicles, passing out handouts, replenishing/organizing sale stock, directing questions to Horticulture staff.

    

Qualifications:

• All Virginia Living Museum volunteers must work a minimum of 1 shift per month.
• Ability to report on time when scheduled. If you are not able to attend, it is required that you inform Volunteer Services so that a substitute can be found if necessary.
• Must be at least 15 years of age.
• Basic knowledge of groundskeeping, landscape design, tools, plants and their care, preferred.
• Typing and computer skills, including working knowledge of Word and Excel, preferred.
• Enthusiasm for horticulture.
• Ability to work independently with minimal supervision.
• Physical ability to work outside in the elements year round.
• Physical ability to bend, climb, kneel, reach, stoop preferred.
• Physical ability to carry, lift, pull/push weighted objects preferred.
• Must be comfortable working in close proximity with animals including birds, coyotes, mice, toads, snakes.
• Willing to work in old clothes and shoes that will become dirty and/or wet.
  

Special Instructions:

 

 

• At the beginning of a Horticulture shift, after signing in, report to the Horticulture office.

Training:

• New Volunteer Orientation
• On-the-job training includes all of the above. In addition as time permits, for Volunteers that so desire, on-the-job training will also include training in scientific names, use of dichotomous keys, plant identification, general plant morphology, and traditional uses of plants by colonists and Indians.
  
  

Supervisor:

• Direct supervisors: Horticulture Curator and Horticulture staff 
• Also reports to Volunteer Services Staff
  
  

Please submit a volunteer application to the Volunteer Services Office.