Think back to young adulthood—what was your favorite summer job? What cemented it as a nostalgic time in your life? Was it your coworkers? The work itself? Or maybe the excitement of experiencing new things? 

For many of our Newfields Horticulture Fellowship Students the highlights of their experience with us encompass all of the above.  

The Horticulture department at Newfields has hosted a three-month summer student program for over thirty years. In the past five years, Newfields Horticulture Fellow graduates have accepted positions at incredible places like Denver Botanic Gardens, Mount Cuba Center, Longwood Gardens, Dow Gardens, Atlanta Botanical Garden, state/county extension agencies, other public horticulture institutions, and beyond. 

This paid professional fellowship program is designed for students in secondary education settings or recent graduates and is packed full of learning experiences for those interested in pursuing a career in horticulture.  

Throughout the summer, students rotate through Newfields garden and horticulture staff to be exposed to as many different angles of the job as possible. They will experience different design aesthetics, management techniques, invasive species control, irrigation strategies, plant records, and so much more. Even more valuable is their chance to have warm moments with volunteers who bestow the best advice and retell entertaining institutional tales, and to spend hot afternoons trekking through parks, cemeteries, zoos, greenhouses, and botanical institutions throughout the Midwest in pursuit of inspiration.  

There’s plenty of sweat, mosquito bites, and poison ivy rashes gained through hundreds of hours of hard work. But the learning, laughs, and overwhelming satisfaction of having a hand in creating such magical gardens seems to make the physical discomfort of such a demanding job worthwhile. 

We have been fortunate to have some amazing students over the years. A few now call Newfields “home” professionally. Ian Wilhite, our current Greenhouse Horticulturist (Orchid Wizard), was an intern in 2007. After his time as a student he worked in estate horticulture, came back for a short stint as a Newfields seasonal gardener, then spent time at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Florida before returning to use his botanical magic on our Madeline F. Elder Greenhouse orchid collection. He has most recently adventured overseas to London to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to study their collections management practices and bring some of that knowledge stateside to help us improve our practices here at Newfields. 

Leah Coughlin joined us after graduating from Purdue University in August of 2022 after spending a “Maymester” exploring gardens in England. When her summer as a fellowship student last year ended, she was invited to spend the rest of the season as a gardener and then welcomed back again in the winter as a full-time assistant horticulturist. She has been such a delight to have and we look forward to watching her grow her design style and plant knowledge in the years to come. I personally love her attention to detail and love of documentation (it’s easy to win over the plant records professional near you with these traits). You can see Leah’s work in and around the Richard D. Wood Formal Garden. 

This summer, we are excited to have two wonderful students, Sawyer Knuteson and Anna Catherine Yerian, who come to us from two different backgrounds. Sawyer is taking a break from his master’s in landscape architecture program at Illinois Institute of Technology to focus on understanding how plants function in the reality of a completed, installed, and thriving landscape. He is also currently a draftsman at Reveal Design LLC in Chicago, IL.  

Anna Catherine is a rising senior at Purdue University. She began her secondary education online overseas but returned to Indiana during the pandemic. After refocusing her studies on botany, she’s discovered a real love for gardening—–weeding, especially! Over the next few weeks, we’ll work on clarifying what’s next for her career as she heads back to school for another semester. 

Newfields Horticulture Fellows’ education extends well beyond the 152-acre Newfields campus. In the past few seasons, our students have participated in a staff exchange with Yew Dell Botanical Gardens in Crestwood, KY. They travel with one of our staff members to spend three days learning from colleagues at other institutions. This intensive time is a perfect recipe to get a taste of what it means to be a professional in public horticulture and to network with regional cohorts.   

One of my perennial goals for our students is to help them sort through “what’s next” in their burgeoning careers. I was lucky to have an incredible slew of mentors, bosses, and people cheering me on as a young professional, and I strive to give that same experience to the up-and-coming plant nerds that come through Newfields’ doors. We spend quite a bit of time exploring what sparks their interests as well as programs that could be a good fit for them after they leave us.  

All of this is made possible through a generous legacy grant made by the Horticulture Society, a membership affiliate group that focused on programming and fundraising on behalf of The Garden at Newfields for many years.  

This program accepts rolling admissions. To be considered, email a current resume and cover letter to me, Jaime Frye, at jfrye@discovernewfields.org. 

Image credits: 

Views of Rapp Family Ravine Garden. 

Annie Klemz (2021) planting the in The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park Wild Birds Unlimited Pollinator Meadow

Left: Harrison Lane and Annie Klemz (2021) celebrating the completion of their summer project. Right: Shannon Hawkins (2018) with her prize-winning weed.

Matthew Calhoun (2022) in front of The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park Wild Birds Unlimited Pollinator Meadow which he spent his first summer with Newfields installing.