Volunteer Opportunities for NIHS Members 2026
No matter what your age or interests, your skills or schedule, you can help the NIHS in its valuable work. Volunteering for the NIHS is a great way to expand your knowledge of plants, give back to your community, meet new people, and share your love of Hostas and companion shade plants with other like minded people. Within the NIHS there are many activities for which volunteers can help and continue to build the success of our society. Please consider offering your volunteer assistance in one of the following:
Garden Walk Table Greeters
Please volunteer as a docent at one of our summer garden walks for a couple of hours. You will greet visitors at our NIHS table and have them sign the Sign-in sheet for that particular garden and encourage them to fill out a sticker name tag if they forgot their NIHS name tag. Don't forget to wear your own NIHS name tag. Our table greeters can sign up to work summer garden walks on dates and times that work with each of your personal schedules. There is time allocated for you to work for a period of time on the date of the garden walk and still allow you time to see the gardens in the area for that date. Please sign up using Signup Genius. Click on the link. P.S. Do you have a garden or know of a private garden that you think members would be interested in visiting? Please let our Director at Large-Garden Walks know at one of our Symposiums or reach out to him/her through our Contact Us page on our website if you have a recommendation. |
Annual Bus Trip
Do you have gardens, nurseries, botanical gardens, public gardens you would like us to consider for our annual day trips, send your suggestions to our Vice President through our Contact Us page on our Navigation bar for consideration. Don't forget to wear your NIHS name tag to these events. |
|
|
|
Chicago Botanical Garden-Leaf Show
Jube 5 (set up) and June 6-7, 2026 (Leaf Show and tear down) Please consider lending a hand during the dates and times that NIHS will be at the show. Volunteers are needed to man the booth tallying Favorite Leaf votes, passing out Favorite Leaf Voting forms, and mingling with the visitors (approximately 2-3 hour shifts) during the show and to answer visitors' questions about hostas. To volunteers, please click on this link to use Signup genius and select a time slot to help us out. We will provide a NIHS Membership Table to recruit new members for our organization. It will be manned by two people. A QR code will be available for new members to scan the QR code and join our organization and pay their dues using Square. We have a prepared slide show presentation that will be on display sharing the joys of NIHS membership on a loop. We also have a member speaker that talks around 11:00 a.m. with a slide show presentation. In addition to the slide show presentation, we will provide some informative handouts, provide some demonstrations and provide time for asking and answering questions on Saturday and Sunday. Our first shifts begin on Friday morning for accepting display leaves and continues with set up. On Saturday our shifts begin in the morning at 10:00 a.m. however, we are asking our volunteers to get the CBG by 9:00 a.m. and end at 4:00 p.m.. Then on Sunday, our shifts begin in the morning and continue- until clean up. Here are the specific work shifts we need covered: May 30-8:30 a.m. until 12 noon (set up) May 31-9:00 a.m Arrive for your shift and public arrives at 10:00 a.m. --1:00 p.m./1:00-4:00 p.m. June 1-9:30 a.m. -1 p.m./1:00 -5:00 p.m. includes tear down If you are interested in volunteering, please go to the Signup Genius link above. Thank you for volunteering. |
Cantigny Volunteer Work Days
Volunteers return to Cantigny in the spring and continue through October. NIHS has shared responsibility with Cantigny Golf & Park to maintain our beautiful American Hosta Society (AHS) garden. Currently, there are only 26 AHS gardens in the United States. No matter what your age or interests, your skills or schedule, you can help the NIHS in its valuable work. Volunteering for the NIHS is a great way to expand your knowledge of plants, give back to your community, meet new people, and share your love of hostas and companion shade plants with others. The work sessions include general garden clean-up, weeding and requires about a two-three hour commitment of time Wednesday morning twice a month. If you are interested in volunteering your time, please contact Stevie Meginness, President on our NIHS Society. For further information and consideration please reach out to her. Don't forget to wear your NIHS name tag. After you are approved through Cantigny Security, you will obtain a volunteers badge for Cantigny and a Cantigny volunteers shirt. |
NIHS Annual Bus Trip
June 20, 2026 Information on the bus trip was found on pages 9-12 in our March 2026 newsletter. We usually devote a full day to touring gardens, private and public and provide opportunities to shop for hostas and companion plants. All registrants for the Bus tour will be provided an agenda via email. We will go on our bus trip regardless of the weather, so we encourage our members to bring rain gear if the weather looks unfavorable. Don't forget to wear your NIHS name tag. You will be able to register and pay for your day trip using our secure online server which will open on March 26, 2026 at 8 a.m. sharp. The agenda was posted in our Award winning NIHS newsletter that our members received via email in March. You will also be able to find the agenda under our Member's Only password protected section on our website by March 26, 2026 for reference. NIHS Members, for further information, please check out the March 2026 NIHS newsletter edition, pages 9-12 that was sent to your NIHS member email on March 14th. |
Annual Auction
Save the Date: Sunday, August 9, 2026. The auction will begin at 1:00 p.m. This is our only fundraiser for the year. We will be looking for volunteers to assist us with the auction and clean up. Volunteers are needed to:
|
|
|