Internship Position: Tree inventory specialist
Rockwood Park & Museum is seeking a 2025 summer intern to assist the horticulture team in a research project to apply for arboretum status. Rockwood is an 1851 6-acre Picturesque garden, surrounding a Gothic Revival mansion, within a 75-acre park. This collection of trees within the original Specimen Garden has been stewarded by several members of the Shipley/Bringhurst/Hargraves family as well as New Castle County government for 170 years. Rockwood is among the oldest of the region’s storied gardens and features much of its original design, garden structures, heritage plantings, and perhaps the oldest attached conservatory in the country.
The intern selected for this project will inventory, with GIS locations, the woody plant collection within the historic garden and parts of the wider park using botanical binomial and any common names. Research should be conducted on the tree’s approximate age and its potential history in this estate-turned-park. Identification and social history data will be saved on a spreadsheet and labeled on each plant. Under supervision, the intern will use this inventory to help complete the arboretum application form, to update an on-line exhibition of featured plants in the park and establish a 5-year maintenance program for the inventoried plants. Interns may additionally be asked to help with some garden maintenance and public programs within the garden as needed. A public presentation of the student’s research and project progress is required at the end of the summer.
This internship is expected to be scheduled at approximately 20 hours per week for 8-10 weeks.
Rockwood is able to commit $1000 toward this internship.
Ryan Grover
Director
Rockwood Park & Museum
4651 Washington Street Ext.
Wilmington, DE 19802
rockwood.org
302-395-2853 o
302-650-2513 c
ryan.grover@newcastlede.gov
