Volunteers & Interns: 2025 In Review

By Brandon Reynolds, CGC Community Engagement Coordinator

2025 proved to be a dynamic year for our volunteer program. We received just over 400 new volunteer registrations and held 151 workdays to service our grounds, community gardens and public parks, racking up over 4,200 volunteer labor hours. Needless to say, we've been busy stewarding what we love with people who care for the planet we share! We hope the stories below inspire you to build with purpose in your communities, families and within yourself.

The Dirt Crew

None of our annual reports would be complete without honoring our longest-running volunteer force, the Dirt Crew. Whether it's planting dozens of perennials for pollinators, refreshing garden walkways with mulch or assembling booths for our plant sales, they have consistently shown up at the CGC to volunteer every Wednesday morning for decades. When we daydream about what the world would look like if people had more intentional friendships grounded in environmentalism and community stewardship, the Dirt Crew embodies those visions in real time. We're grateful for the 865 volunteer hours they spent managing Hauck Botanic Garden in 2025 and look forward to making more memories together in 2026.

Horticulture Team

Our Horticulture program is the backbone of our onsite volunteer experience. Nearly every Friday morning from March to December, we offer Hands On at Hauck, where volunteers work alongside CGC staff to care for Hauck Botanic Garden, the public park that the CGC calls home. Each workday has a different flavor, with experiences ranging from traditional garden maintenance (weeding, mulching, pruning) to installing prairies and butterfly gardens that encourage biodiversity and promote curb appeal. We even held our first community BioBlitz in 2025!

One of our most exciting projects from last year was installing a micro-prairie on an eroding hillside along Reading Road near our main office, where non-native plants had made it difficult for deep-rooted native species to grow. Over the course of two workdays, our volunteers gave the hillside a facelift and install dozens of perennial grasses and wildflowers. We're looking forward to viewing the space in all its colorful, textured, low-maintenance glory this spring. We also cultivated a partnership with the Hamilton County Land Reutilization Corporation (“Landbank”) to convert a vacant lot in Price Hill into an accessible neighborhood park for residents to enjoy year-round (read more about this Dewey Avenue project here).

In total, our horticulture projects netted more than 1,200 hours over 49 workdays on our grounds and across the city. We're excited for what 2026 has in store!

Conservation Team

Whether it was growing thousands of native plants from seed as part of our ReRooted program, nurturing a wildflower prairie in Walnut Woods of Evanston or deleting invasive shrubs on public land, our Conservation Team found plenty of ways to stay grounded in 2025. Over the course of 21 workdays, conservation volunteers put in just over 600 volunteer hours. What's even more impressive is these numbers don't include the independent service projects our Greenspace Guardians cohort facilitated throughout Greater Cincinnati.

We believe that conservation starts with the individual. It's why we pour so much effort into educating our volunteers on the importance of native plants and their role in supporting local wildlife and natural beauty. As we continue to support a wider array of partners across the region in their conservation efforts, our volunteer work will only expand. 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. Over the 2025 growing season, volunteers contributed 650 hours of support by refilling bioreactors, harvesting leafy greens, installing brick patios, building three-bin compost systems, removing annoying weeds and so much more. Many of the businesses and community groups we hosted this year helped in these gardens as well.

Education Team

Whether it was working with youth to transform food scraps into nutritious compost, teaching students the importance of using whole ingredients to prepare meals or showing volunteers how to incorporate medicinal herbs into their skincare routines, our Education Team spent 2025 nurturing curiosity and exploration. Our Compost Kids and Lil' Sprouts volunteers dedicated over 200 hours to fostering environmental innovation with youth.

All signs point to 2026 being a year of learning and acquiring new skills. If you want to invest in the next generation of environmental stewards, pioneers and problem solvers, join our Education Team today.

Events & Outreach Team

Traditionally, our Events & Outreach Team has focused all its energy on managing two of our core fundraiser events: our spring plant sale (now part of GrowFest) and the Fall Native Plant Festival. In 2025, these two events—rain or shine—garnered a combined record attendance of over 2,500 guests, state-wide vendor participation and nearly 600 hours of volunteer time. This year, we also had help from a small but mighty team to help plan our annual Winter Open House, an end-of-year appreciation event for our CGC community and volunteer support for our first-ever “In the Garden” jazz concert.

Volunteer Groups

Word is getting out that the CGC offers some of the most accessible, engaging, down-to-earth volunteer events in the city. In 2025, we welcomed over 30 unique volunteer groups to our grounds, community gardens and public park projects, hosting groups from the Boston Beer Company (Sam Adams), University of Cincinnati Honors Program, Thomas Moore, Brixey & Meyer, General Electric, Lowe's and Badin High School, to name a few. Even our bankers at Park National Bank supported us with several workdays to see what the buzz was all about! Whether you're a corporate team, a church group, a group of friends who play Dungeons & Dragons together or a weekly Pickleball club—if you're looking to get your hands in the dirt for fun, we’ve got you covered.

Interns

In addition to our newer Green Teens high school interns, the CGC has long benefitted from an internship program for adult students and volunteers. Over the years, we’ve even had the pleasure of hiring several interns as staff. Our internship experience offers hands-on work in urban agriculture, conservation and environmental education—activities that are essential to ecological sustainability in the Cincinnati region—tailored to each individual’s interests.

Interns deepen their knowledge of botany, horticulture and educational pedagogy while also learning effective methods for building and sustaining meaningful community partnerships. During their internships, students work in gardens and urban green spaces, maintain green infrastructure and teach foundational skills to community members eager to strengthen our local environment.

The goal of our internship program is to cultivate environmental advocates and green industry leaders—individuals who will meet the challenges of today’s climate crisis with creativity, insight and determination. In 2025, we hosted three such interns, who collectively contributed hundreds of hours tending gardens and green spaces and supporting our youth and adult educational programs. (Meet intern Katie in the article she wrote for our fall newsletter.)

Looking Ahead

From our perspective, the CGC’s future is bright. We're incorporating more community science opportunities into our workdays so volunteers play direct roles in tracking the health of our urban greenspaces. We've also begun a partnership with Cardinal Land Conservancy to transform a ten-acre site in the CUF neighborhood into one of the city's most biodiverse public parks. Projects like these are great on paper, but it takes the support of people like you to bring them to life. Let's work together to go even further beyond in 2026!