Volunteering: 2024 In Review
5,240 volunteer hours in 2024 sounds like a big number—but how does it feel, what is its measurable impact and who made this sum possible?
We have a diverse cast of over 1,200 volunteers within our network who power our workdays, events, community outreach initiatives and more. So each volunteer hour can be traced back to a tangible, sincere and reliable source: the commitment of one individual who, like you, lives in the communities we serve, understands the importance of greenspace accessibility, feels the threats of climate change, and realizes the power of collective action. We hope the stories below inspire you to create more positive outcomes in the world.
The Dirt Crew
The Dirt Crew is a dedicated group of volunteers that has been gathering at the CGC for decades, gardening tools in hand, ready to do whatever needs to be done. They meet every Wednesday morning, rain or shine, and tackle jobs ranging from planting flowers to sweeping up the sidewalks. And even though they’re the hardest workers around, the Dirt Crew always makes sure to break for lunch, sharing birthday baked goods, travel stories and the joys and struggles of life. We’re so grateful for the 675 hours of work they put in on the CGC’s behalf over their 33 2024 workdays.
Horticulture Team
Weekly Friday volunteers have been a three-season staple in Hauck Botanic Garden for years, but in 2024 we reinvigorated this part of our volunteer program with a focus on hands-on education. Friday workdays got a rebrand as Hands On at Hauck, a free and open horticultural training session where participants work alongside staff to gain experience in a wide range of gardening tasks: pruning, planting trees, weeding, mulching and more.
Our Horticulture Team also tackled several big projects last year. In May, 25 volunteers installed our new Native Food Forest, a garden made entirely of edible plants and designed to mimic a woodland environment. We added 36 new species (270 total plants) that will grow to provide food for both human and wildlife visitors.
Then, in October, 18 volunteers joined us to renovate the Butterfly Garden by planting 20 new species. All 320 of these individual plants were grown here at the Civic Garden Center through our ReRooted program. The majority of them are not found anywhere else in the park, and each species has a special relationship with important native pollinators. In the same month, our dedicated Hands on at Hauck volunteers completed a massive installation of 300 native sedges featuring 10 different species. This unique garden highlights an incredible but underappreciated genre of native plants and offers inspiration to home gardeners struggling with tough garden conditions.
In total, our Horticulture Team put in a whopping 1,065 hours over 53 workdays on our grounds in 2024…and that’s not counting the Dirt Crew!
Conservation Team
Volunteers continued to play a major role in our conservation activities this year, putting in 601 hours over 16 workdays at sites around Cincinnati. Our two primary sites were our long-time Walnut Woods project and Alms Park. At Walnut Woods, we expanded last year’s prairie planting with the addition of roughly 1,500 plants and kept up with invasive plant management. With volunteer help, we continued to add trees to the site as well, with roughly 200 saplings planted in November in an attempt to establish canopy species in places where we have lost large trees.
Our Alms Park events were held in partnership with Cincinnati Parks through the Cincinnati Conservation Stewards Program. Volunteers worked to remove invasives and plant 50 trees into the recently cleared area. Alms Park Advisory Council has been doing conservation work for a number of years at the site, and by partnering with them, we were able to bring more attention to their efforts and help complete invasive species removal in the oval that lies in the middle of the park. We hope the increased awareness of their work will help them sustain a larger volunteer force moving forward.
In addition to these projects, conservation volunteers helped us with our ReRooted Program in which we grew 4,000 pollinator plants at the CGC and an additional 400 trees. These were planted at several restoration sites this fall, primarily Mt. Airy Forest. We also worked with the Community Action Agency, a group of 30 volunteers from Barnes Dennig and a professional team from Sustainable Sights Landscaping to install 188 native shrubs and perennials in front of CAA’s Bond Hill campus. As this garden grows, it will support local wildlife, provide beauty and education to visitors to the CAA and hopefully inspire other organizations to join the native plant movement.
As we continue to support a wider array of partners around the region in their conservation efforts, we expect our conservation volunteer work to continue to grow and expand in 2025. We hope to see you out there!
Urban Agriculture Team
Our Urban Agriculture Program provides development training and volunteer support to over 65 community gardens and 75 school gardens in Greater Cincinnati. In 2024, volunteers spent over 425 collective hours planting seeds, refilling bioreactors, pruning fruit trees, mulching, turning compost piles, planting pollinators and doing a colossal amount of weeding! These tasks and more play a vital role in keeping our gardens in prime condition so that coordinators can continually engage their neighbors using homegrown food as a gateway to healthier lifestyles and community well-being.
Some of our favorite moments from 2024 include:
The Camp Washington Community Garden's eight garden beds were built, installed and filled with soil by CGC volunteers just in time for 2024 graduates of our Community Garden Development Training (CGDT) to complete their practicum by planting fresh vegetables and seeds.
Students from Badin High School descended on three of our community gardens during their week of service to remove wheelbarrows of weeds, sow cover crops, eat homegrown jalapeños and prep garden beds for winter.
Volunteers installed shade-loving native plants in our Pendleton Children's Garden to serve as a habitat for wildlife and an educational opportunity for the youth who use the garden.
Our community gardens show how urban agriculture is a pathway to prosperity. We're thankful for all our volunteers who make this program possible!
Education Team
From facilitating Green Teens and Compost Kids excursions to critiquing school ecology projects, our Education Team fosters the next generation of environmental stewards.
Each of our Education volunteers is adept at using their life experience to break down the walls between a student's quiet curiosity and their active pursuit of a STEM career. A single touchpoint like facilitating a Compost Kids field trip can be the perfect pathway for students to understand the value of small change agents (like microbes and soldier fly larvae) and how they work together to foster innovation. In 2024, our 12 dedicated Compost Kids facilitators offered 205 of their hours to providing kids with experiences like these. (Want to join them? We have a training coming up on March 18!)
Curiosity has no limits. We are grateful to our Education team for nurturing today's pioneers and tomorrow's problem solvers.
Events
Our two largest annual fundraisers—GrowFest and the Fall Native Plant Festival—would cease to exist without the concerted effort of our Events and Outreach Team. In 2024, volunteers spent just over 600 hours powering our big annual events.
As you can imagine, members of this team wear many hats. Whether it be expert-level baking (we're looking at you, Jennie!), arranging GrowFest plants (we love you, Dirt Crew!), tackling the CGC's endless list of maintenance projects (Bobby!) or helping out with graphic design (hey, Darrin!), this group puts the "time" in showtime.
We send warm hugs and sincere thanks to our greeters, check-out attendants, gardeners, plant list curators (yes, even the CGC needs help from plant geeks!), Green Flea facilitators and everyone in between for your time. We can't wait to celebrate your hard work at one of our upcoming appreciation events!
Volunteer Groups
In 2024, we welcomed 13 groups that volunteered together: GE, TEVA Pharmaceuticals, Ethicon, Fifth Third Bank, Accenture, Dentsu, DME, US Bank, Beech Acres Parenting Foundation, Cincinnati Development Fund, Givaudan, Park National Bank and Duke Energy. In total, 136 individuals put in 368 hours helping out at Hauck Botanic Garden, in community gardens in our network and at other sites around Cincinnati. We are deeply grateful for the time and effort these groups put into furthering our work!
Do you have a group that would like to volunteer together? Find out more about volunteering as a group at the CGC!
Staff Changes
Toward the end of 2024, our Community Engagement Coordinator, Shelby, left the CGC in order to take care of her adorable newborn twins. Shortly thereafter, Brandon Reynolds joined our team in the role of CEC. His enthusiasm for our work is contagious, and you will definitely get to know him if you spend much time volunteering with us!
Looking Ahead
2025 is already shaping into our biggest year yet. Our usual winter reprieve has been spent confirming spring workdays, nurturing new partnerships and oiling our systems in preparation for our signature events. The CGC is growing and we can't wait to share all we have in store. Not registered yet? Check out our Volunteer page to find your teams and start getting your hands dirty doing something that matters. We look forward to hosting you for a volunteer event soon!