Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden
While some people are rifling through garden catalogues in anticipation of spring, others are planting indoors to satisfy their need to feel dirt. But this is a great time to travel and there are lots of botanical gardens that offer gardening internships that include housing.
New York City based garden designer Paula de la Cruz, principal of Allscape Design
traveled to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in South Africa.
She wrote: "I am now someone who knows how to pollinate birds of paradise with a porcupine quill. It's something I learned during a three-month internship at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, in Cape Town, South Africa, last fall. But while I'd traveled halfway around the world from New York to learn technique, I'm also fascinated by a good story. This is the legend that goes with the local birds of paradise: Sunbirds used to eat the Zulu people's crops, so an angry god transformed them into flowers. Now, when the birds of paradise look at the sun, tears of nectar run down their stalks from where their eyes would be--and new sunbirds flock to them, making meals of their sorrow." Visit her website Allscape Design
, and click on "Publications" to see the full article.
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden
Here's Paula's list of places to get your gardening fix:
The Eden Project
Cornwall, United Kingdom
Little tells you that this haven of sustainable ecology started as a china clay pit. Interns and volunteers learn the codes for ecologically correct practices while working with 100,000 plants in the largest conservatory garden on Earth. Just don't try to prune the stately pomegranate tree that Prince Charles planted in 2001, or the bobbies might come for you.
Telephone: +44 (0)1726 811911
Hillwood Museum and Gardens
Washington D.C., US
Improve your civic education while grooming the "outdoor rooms" of this pleasure garden. Marjorie Merriweather Post purchased the estate in 1955 and used it mostly to entertain. There is a putting green that is still maintained to perfection where Mrs. Post allowed her guests to putt, but she mostly used to exercise. This beautiful Washington D.C. oasis gives it a new meaning to power mini golf.
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens
Fort Bragg, California, U.S.
This is the only botanical garden in the continental US where you can tend to the plants while gazing at the ocean. The 43-acre cliffside garden welcomes volunteers and, offers housing to unpaid interns from around the world, from three months to a year. The unique foggy, cool summers, allow the gardens to grow the rare Rhododendron macabeanum from the Indian Himalayas, but alas no chardonnay vines.
Le Jardin Exotique de Monaco Montecarlo, Monaco
Just a moped's ride away from Cannes, this vertical rock garden lets experienced horticultural interns work its three-acre rock walls of cactus, in a micro-microclimate created by the Mediterranean sun heating up the rock. Here, the exotica is a dragon tree and a prehistoric calcareous cave, while regular fare is a good bouillabaisse after a hard day of gardening.
Telephone: +377 93 15 29 80
Ayrlies, Auckland, New Zealand
This privately owned garden is open to the public by appointment only. The renowned garden photographer Alain Le Toquin has called it "the most beautiful private garden in the world." The estate was designed by Beverley McConnell to follow the contours of the land. If its 30 acres prove too constraining for your horticultural curiosity, botanize through New Zealand's 26,000 square miles of natural forest.
Telephone: +64 9 530 8706