Volunteers
West Dean offers an exciting and rewarding environment in which to volunteer. There are two key areas in which we need your support, depending on your interests and experience. Please write to us with your interests and enclose a copy of your CV.
If you are interested in gardening, write to The Gardens Supervisor, West Dean Gardens. If you are interested in administration and general duties, write to Head of Communications.
Send your letter and CV to West Dean, Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 0QZ. Thank you.
The volunteers listed below discuss their experiences of working in the Gardens!
Lesley Aylwin has been a volunteer since 1998
“It is immensely satisfying to realise that I have had an input, however small, into the beauty of the garden, and I am very proud of that. It is great, too, to be a part of the friendly team, and I look forward to coming each week.”
Iris Lynch
To anybody wondering whether or not to volunteer their time at West Dean Gardens I can only say you’ll never regret it.
I was lucky enough to be the second ever West Dean volunteer. Having decided to retrain in horticulture I was looking around to find somewhere I could gain real knowledge and expertise whilst taking my exam at Brinsbury College and to my eternal good fortune Jim and Sarah were just starting to build a volunteer programme, so when I bowled in and announced I would like to work there one day a week for no pay the gods were smiling on me.
Many volunteers have no intention of working in the industry, you may just want to learn more about looking after your own garden or allotment, if so, you will find the time you give to West Dean very well spent. There are few gardens in the country that offer the potential to learn so much about so many horticultural disciplines including fruit and vegetable cultivation, propagation, flower border planting and maintenance, glasshouse collection presentation and maintenance, even the way to maintain the perfect lawn and hedge if that’s your bag.
The standards of horticulture at West Dean are second to none and you will learn with two of the most highly respected horticulturists in the UK. I was privileged to be offered a position there and worked at the gardens for three years before going on to study at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. I now run my own successful landscaping and garden design business in London and there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t draw on something I learned at West Dean.
Should you decide to offer your time you will join a very happy band of people who are passionate about the gardens and enjoy every minute they spend behind it’s walls. Be careful, you may, as I did, find it addictive!
Aude de Liedekerke
Volunteering at West Dean Gardens as a career boost.
I arrived in West Dean in April 2003 for a three months internship and stayed over two years. I was then considering a career in horticulture and my first aim was to acquire a foundation in practical horticulture in a recognised establishment, which I did thanks to the patience and generosity of Jim And Sarah. Volunteering in West Dean has benefited my career in several ways. I was often brought along to visit private and public gardens, therefore networking with other great gardeners. It also opened doors and I was taken on the world-famous Kew Diploma in Horticulture in 2005. There I understood the importance of a good grounding in practical horticulture that I could not possibly have gained by sitting in a classroom! Working alongside knowledgeable and experienced gardeners, as well as observing the course of the seasons in and out the wall garden, has greatly contributed to my understanding of plants and their cultivation when I was managing various botanical collections in Kew Gardens. I graduated withHonours in September 2008 and I trust that it is the result of the training I received in West Dean, where I learned how attention to details was.
Carla Gleeson
“I was an in-house lawyer before changing to horticulture. It was an adventure for me to try out a completely different career. I wanted to know what I was like at practical work and I had this expanding interest in plants. Volunteering was a way for me to show that I was serious and West Dean was the most gorgeous garden in my area. I couldn’t have chosen a better place to volunteer. The horticulture is so rigorous, the volunteer tasks are very varied, always planned, there is a really broad range of plants from tropical to vegetable and the setting is idyllic. I was keen to learn and I really benefited enormously from the knowledge that resides at West Dean. I currently work in the Tropical Nursery at Kew with responsibility for the Dry Tropics unit. When my plants are perfectly lined up at Kew, it’s really a homage to Sarah!”
Sigrid Sharp
A year working for a small landscaping company, stirred up my interest in the possibilities of a career in Horticulture, but I lacked both practical experience and basic qualifications. I enrolled on a part-time course, RHS level 2, at Chichester College and became self-employed, in garden maintenance. Nevertheless, I knew there would be a big gap in my CV unless I could gain some experience in public gardens.
A volunteer position at West Dean Gardens (a hub of excellence in plant knowledge and expertise) is the perfect training ground for the eager student gardener. Much is expected and much gained. Listening to precise instructions, I learnt horticultural techniques that I later applied in the private gardens I cared for. Volunteer hours are never wiled away and I learnt to plan efficiently, so as not to have to double back on a job. Unlike other organisations, you do have to bring your own refreshments for tea break, but then you get to take away quantities of plants and produce at the end of the day!
When I applied for further training opportunities, I was given invaluable interview advice and provided with a reference. I am now a trainee at RHS Wisley, but I believe the most important thing I gained by volunteering at West Dean was a bench mark, (particularly as regards good working practices and attention to detail) on which to base my future horticultural endeavours.
Josephine Hindle
Why am I a volunteer in West Dean Gardens? When we retired a few years ago we chose a home that had walkability (no need to use the car for most things), that we could lock up and leave for longish breaks away and, inevitably, we downsized the garden and made it low maintenance. But I started to suffer from gardening deprivation. I luckily got an allotment only four minutes walk from home, but it wasn’t enough. When I heard that West Dean Gardens – only six miles away, and which I knew well from attending the College courses – welcomed volunteers, I joined up and have been doing one day a week for about three years. I have been a gardenholic for more than 30 years and, after a career in the early days of computing, I decided to be a garden designer (I trained at the Chelsea Physic Garden) and enjoyed it but enjoyed it even more when clients asked me to help them with setting up the borders I designed. At that time (as a form of advertising) I opened my garden under the “Yellow Book” scheme. I enjoyed the gardening so much more than the drawing board that I became a gardener. I did a one year WRAGS traineeship and finally spent the last four years of my working life as part of the garden team on a beautiful estate owned by a multi-millionaire. And now I am part of a team on an even more beautiful estate at West Dean. Gardening for me is the greatest of pleasures – it is not just plants: it is the fresh air, the sounds of nature, the contrast of weather, the changing seasons, the sky and clouds, the landscape, the exercise, the feel of the soil, the earthworms (Darwin's last book was on earthworms), the birds and the plants – colour, form, feel, scent, birth, life and death.
What does a “vollie” do at West Dean? That is the best part of it! You never know, from one week to the next. My oddest task was pollinating the peaches in the glasshouse with a rabbit’s tail. This week we were raking the leaves out of the shrub borders – the Sarcococcas were in flower (January) and the scent divine. The work could be pricking out baby plants, pulling up spent sweet peas, cropping beans, weeding the cold frames, cutting back clematis, scrubbing pots, tidying the rows of plants for sale at the Visitors’ Centre, tying the gourds up the pyramid frames, splitting snowdrops into clusters for replanting, sowing seeds in trays or direct. You could be working in the glasshouses, or the cut flower borders, the herb beds, in the orchard, the potting shed, along the pergola, the gravel garden, or the wild garden by the river. There is so much to learn – the extent and variety of vegetables grown is extraordinary. You are shown how to do the work properly and how to use and care for the tools correctly. West Dean Gardens are the most immaculate I have ever seen and it is a privilege and a pleasure to participate.
