Meet our Summer Interns!
Anna Little
Anna LittleAs a Youth and Family Education Intern for Green Spring Gardens, I had the opportunity to work with the kids’ camps this summer. You’ve probably seen us looking for roly-polies, earthworms, and monarch caterpillars in the Children’s Garden; making fairy houses in the wooded area by the Historic House; or observing turtles by the ponds. We had a lot of fun this summer. Kids would come to camp worried that everything in the woods was poison ivy and with a phobia of bees, but by the end of the week, they would leave with a better understanding and appreciation for the nature around them.
As a student at Brigham Young University majoring in Biology Education, I’ve read studies that show the positive effects of nature exposure in children. In doing this internship I was able to see firsthand the way children thrive in nature. I have a love of botany, so my favorite thing to teach the kids was the species of trees native to Green Spring. We would walk to each type of tree. I would tell them facts about the tree, and we would talk about how to identify it. The rest of the week on our walks I would hear, “Ms. Anna, look, it’s another tulip tree!”
This experience has also given me valuable experience in classroom management. We had lots of unique personalities and skill levels coming to camp, and I have come to appreciate the difficult job teachers have to make sure that the activities meet each child’s individual needs.
I am still in the beginnings of my major and looking at what kind of career I want to pursue when I graduate, so experience being a teacher and leading a classroom has been vital in helping me make decisions about my career path.
Bella Hammond
Bella HammondHello! My name is Bella Hammond, and I worked as the Farmers Market Food Security Intern for the summer. I am a rising sophomore at the College of William and Mary, majoring in Linguistics and minoring in Psychology. On campus, I serve as an exec member of Food for All, a student-run food insecurity organization, and oversee our off-campus food pantry.
During my internship, I focused on outreach to local food pantries in order to educate people about our Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at the Farmers Markets. I handed out SNAP flyers and talked to more than 440 individuals at five different food pantries.
In addition to my SNAP outreach, I partnered with Fairfax County Health Department’s Youth Public Health Ambassadors to pilot a Food Donation Program. The Food Donation Program ran for two weeks at both the Lorton and Burke Farmers Markets. For this program we asked customers to buy extra produce from our market vendors and donate it right at the market. Then, volunteers brought the food donations to either the Lorton Community Action Center or Food for Others. Over the course of the Food Donation Program, we received 282 food items from 44 individuals. The Burke Farmers Market alone had donations totaling 183 pounds.
Along with my work on food security, I was the Market Manager at the Lorton Farmers Market from June 25th to August 13th. As the Market Manager, I arrived an hour before every market opening to set up and stayed an hour after every market closing to break down. I handled SNAP transactions at the market and input the data from those transactions and vendor reimbursements into a spreadsheet weekly. Above all else, I developed a sense of community with the vendors and customers at the Lorton Farmers Market and came to know the people at the market well.
At Lorton and all our markets, I helped run our Compost Initiative in June, Bike to Market Week in July, and National Farmers Market Week in August. From June to July, we saw an overall 62 percent increase in food scrap collection due to greater compost awareness, and during National Farmers Market Week, we handed out 2,000 canvas bags and 6,500 reusable produce bags to cut down on plastic bags in the markets.
Many thanks to Caroline and Liza for their mentorship throughout my internship and FROGS for making this opportunity possible. I would have never met so many wonderful people and learned so much about our community if it were not for working with the Farmers Markets this summer.
Eva Gomez
Eva GomezMy name is Eva Gomez and I have been the Historic Resources Intern at the Historic House this summer. I'm a rising third-year history student in the William and Mary St. Andrews Joint Degree Program. I've already completed one year at both William and Mary and St. Andrews, and I'm about to start my second year in Scotland. I've been coming to Green Spring ever since I was a baby, and I have so many great memories of my time spent here. This summer has been so educational. It’s been so interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes running a historic site and the research that is required. There’s always more to learn, and the story is never complete! I have an interest in gender historiography and public history, so working at the Historic House was a great way to gain experience doing direct work on those two types of history.
My first project was my gender historiography paper. I looked at the families of Green Spring and how they acted on or against the gender roles of their times. I looked at both the men and the women, but also specifically at the roles that the women of Green Spring played in the purchasing of the house and land. Secondly, I worked on a local history project on the history of Annandale, which I sent to local high schools. I believe that it makes history so much more interesting if there is a personal connection. Annandale has such an interesting past, so I hope that learning about Annandale’s history will be as enlightening for students as it was for me. My final project was researching more about the enslaved people of Green Spring. Through working with the Fairfax County Historic Records Center and other online archives I was able to discover records of two people who were enslaved by the Sheriffs, who owned Green Spring from 1843 to 1855, and five people enslaved by Hannah O’Brien, the owner from 1855 to 1878.
Through this internship I’ve learned so much about the history of Green Spring but also what I want to research in the future. Thank you to Debbie Waugh, Karen Heyda Jackson, and Sandy Llop for teaching me so much this summer and supporting me with all of my interests. I am extremely grateful to the Friends of Green Spring for giving me this opportunity, which taught me so much and gave me knowledge that will help me for the rest of my career in history.
Noelia Lovo 
Noelia LovoMy name is Noelia Lovo. I am currently a student at Virginia Tech, majoring in Environmental Horticulture with a minor in Agribusiness. I really enjoy learning about the care that different plants need. I started at Green Spring in June and have really loved my time here. I got the opportunity to gain more hands-on experience.
The design aspects of horticulture were not something I was very familiar with before working with the gardeners at Green Spring. Every gardener has their own style, and that made working in every garden a new experience, especially in the swale garden. I gained a new appreciation for the time and dedication that goes into landscape design. I am thankful to Green Spring for everything that I have learned and know it'll be very useful to me moving forward.
Shaeleigh Smith
Shaeleigh SmithHi! I’m Shaeleigh, and I’m one of the horticultural interns. I’m a student at NC State University studying horticulture, with a concentration in landscape design, gardens, and urban environments. After undergrad, I may go to grad school for landscape architecture. I hope to get a job as a landscape designer or architect, but I am considering teaching.
Working as the horticulture intern for Green Spring has taught me a lot about public gardens and how they run. I like being able to help in the garden because it’s so rewarding to see the result after a hard day of working. I like learning about plants and how they work. I like seeing how different people are when it comes to their methods since everyone does things differently.
Thank you to FROGS for providing this wonderful opportunity!
Yasmin Zarabi
Yasmin ZarabiMy name is Yasmin Zarabi, and I’ve been the Virginia Native Plant Garden intern this summer at Green Spring Gardens. I’m a rising senior at New York University, where I am double majoring in Environmental Studies and Public Policy. I’ve been working with and learning from Brenda Skarphol, gardener Alexa Hines, other gardening interns, volunteers, and the horticulture staff. I have done a wide variety of gardening tasks including removing invasive plants from the Virginia Native Plant Garden, adjacent natural areas, and other gardens, as well as general weeding, mulching, and watering. I helped plant native plants in the Native Plant Garden and in other gardens at Green Spring, as well as non-invasive plants in other gardens. I helped limb up trees to let in more light to improve views, and cut off broken and dead branches. I also pruned shrubs and herbaceous plants. I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with members of the Virginia Native Plant Society – Potowmack Chapter on Wednesday mornings and help them with potting and watering the various native plants they grow for plant sales and education.
With this internship, I have been able to learn more about the many native plants and their wonderful value in our local gardens and ecosystems. It has been great to see everyone’s collaboration in keeping the gardens and natural areas at Green Spring looking beautiful. I’m thankful to both FROGS and the Virginia Native Plant Society – Potowmack Chapter for this wonderful experience, as well as to all the staff and volunteers!
