This shouldnt be a hard thing to do finding somewhere to volunteer my services in the Metro DC area. Im hoping to put my knowledge of gardening to some good purpose, do it with other people, and be active without doing grunt labor. The search begins.
Master Gardener programs are probably the top choice among gardeners with time to spare and the will to volunteer, and hold your angry comments I think theyre great, at least the programs Im familiar with in Maryland and Virginia. But when I look at the actual projects that my local group is involved with, none of them really appeals to me. I may change my mind but for now, the search continues.
Asking around among my gardener friends who are retired, I heard great things about volunteering with a particular woody plants expert employed by the National Arboretum but whose research facility is even closer to me, in College Park, MD. The purpose of the facility is to grow trees and shrubs for conservation purposes a great cause, and its favorite plant group! So I visited, hit it off with the expert, who was eager to put my pruning skills to use, and looked forward to my first day on the job. That first day wasnt a terrible summer day by local standards humid but with temperatures in the low 80s but still, I arrived at 8 a.m., as early as possible. I was taken to the growing fields with its row after row of trees and shrubs, given a full complement of pruning tools and an intern to work with, and I got to work.
Now I do love to prune, but it turned out this pruning task would be nothing like what Id ever done before, because aesthetics were of no importance whatsoever. The only thing that matters in this fields is keeping the plants alive, and pruning is only needed to keep branches away from the paths so the large lawn mowers could pass by. But I was game.
Three hours later I was dripping in sweat and so tired I felt sick. My hands were red and aching. I begged off the fourth hour Id promised and came home to shower and bed, waking shortly to feel itching all over my body.
Considering that I rece
ntly sold my beloved house and garden to escape the drudgery of maintaining it all and moved to a townhouse with a manageable-sized garden, I cant help but wonder about this volunteer gig: What was I thinking?
So I confessed my mistake to the nice people at the Arboretum, who suggested I become a tour guide at the Arboretum itself, and Ill be getting trained to do that soon. Walking and talking to visitors? MUCH better idea. Or I could be talking to visitors while touring the acreage on a tram even better! Ill report back.
But thats not until fall, so I kept looking, googling for other outdoor volunteer jobs in the DC area and found one as a roving docent on the National Mall. Not exactly gardening-related, but hey, I could be directing people to the Smithsonian gardens and nearby US Botanic Gardens. And Id always gotten a kick out of chatting with tourists.
So I apply, and during my interview with two sweet Park Rangers I find out that that roving job is just one of lots I could choose on the Mall including working at my favorite memorial, and the favorite of most DC-area gardeners the FDR!! (Heres my post about how lively the FDR Memorial is.) And oh, would I mind also working occasionally at the Jefferson Memorial? That world-famous gardener?
So this week I reported for work, suited up in the official volunteer shirt and cap, and headed for the FDR, where my first task was have this photo taken, and I find out this is a slow memorial. So with two rangers there and two summer interns, no volunteers are actually needed. At least on a weekday. Waaaaah. So I wander over to the Jefferson, where there are plent
y of visitors, but they were visiting from Korea and wouldnt be needing me or any other English-speaker to tell them about the monument. Im told that the Jefferson is yet another low-visitorship spot, so it doesnt really need me, except during the Cherry Blossom Festival, when its so crowded around the Tidal Basin that some of the volunteers choose to stay home until things get back to normal.
So, where ARE volunteers needed because there are actual visitors? Mostly two spots the WWII Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Not gardens wars! But I determined to keep an open mind and I met up with the dedicated volunteers at the WWII Memorial, but hearing them explain the details of the memorial confirmed that this isnt the memorial for me. Classical in style, and lots of symbols of victory.
There is one regular event there that I heard is so moving, it touches the hearts of even the most anti-war types when groups of WWII veterans arrive, after being flown here to see the memorial by a terrific nonprofit organization. Heres a photo of one such event by my photographer friend Steve Brown, who published a book about the memorial. I cant talk Battle of the Bulge with them but I can help in other ways, so Ill give it a try.
Finally, I strolled over to the most popular memorial in town the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which honors not war itself but veterans. And while not really garden-like, its definitely a landscape
-type treatment, much more to my liking, and it attracts mainly visitors from my generation and their kids. We may have been on opposite sides of a very divided nation at the time, but theres been lots of healing since then, something this famous Wall has contributed to.
At the Wall I found a job I can imagine doing and maybe, as one volunteer told me happens to everyone, getting addicted to. Here I would be finding the names of visitors loved ones on the Wall, and helping them take rubbings of the name or in the case of names requiring a ladder to reach, actually taking the rubbing. Id be talking about the Wall, of course the designer, the materials, etc. but this place is mainly about the people who are remembered on it.
So maybe the Wall is my new home away from home at least until I figure out how to scrounge up some visitors to listen to me talk about the FDR memorial and its world-famous landscape architect designer (finally chose after designs by exalted architects were rejected). At least for now, my adventures in volunteering will take me outside the world of gardening, and maybe thats a good thing.
SUGGESTIONS, PLEASE
So, any volunteers out there? I want to hear all about it.