Faces of Green Spring
by Ivy Sinaiko, FROGS Board Member
Many of you are familiar with Pam Smith, a long-time member of the Green Spring staff who is noted for the various leadership roles she has played here. Sunny Greene and I recently chatted with her about a new role she is undertaking, that of Volunteer Coordinator. But first, here’s some background on the versatile Ms. Smith.
Photo of Pam Smith taken by John Smith Pam is a Massachusetts native. She still loves Cape Cod and visits it whenever she can. Her career in the D.C. area began in the intelligence field at the National Security Agency. She left NSA to raise her children, who eventually numbered four.
Her love for the outdoors and hard, physical work had been nurtured by bailing hay, building fences, feeding cows, etc. on a small “gentleman’s farm” owned by her father. Her interest in gardening, though, really “sprouted” when she became involved in developing a children’s garden at a local school. “I knew then that this was what I wanted to do,” Pam told us. While working on an associate degree in horticulture at Northern Virginia Community College, she interned at Green Spring in the Children’s Education program and in 2010 became a member of the Green Spring staff as the Garden Plot Coordinator. By 2012 she had become the Community Horticulture Supervisor, which entailed managing the Master Gardener Program and overseeing the Farmers Markets and Garden Plot programs. While some of her duties in this position have eventually passed on to other Green Spring staffers, Pam is still involved in these programs and now has taken on the additional position as Green Spring’s Volunteer Coordinator.
Although Green Spring has well over 100 volunteers, it has not had a Volunteer Coordinator in several years. Pam is excited about reviving this position. She has researched volunteer programs at other gardens in the area and plans to incorporate some of their best practices into Green Spring’s program. She believes it is important for volunteers to have both social and educational aspects to their volunteer experiences. She hopes to create more structure in the training that volunteers get and to make sure that volunteers know more about who the Green Spring staffers are, who their fellow volunteers are, and how they as volunteers fit into the big picture of what Green Spring Gardens is all about.
Pam emphasized to us the importance of volunteers recording their volunteer hours in the Fairfax County volunteer accounting system. Recorded volunteer hours reflect how much interest there is in Green Spring Gardens, and the County notices.
Sunny and I could have spent much more time with Pam, who has interesting stories to tell about topics as disparate as missing parts on hydrants in the County’s garden plots and political drama at the Farmers Markets. We wish her the best as she takes on another new role, one at which we are sure she will excel.
