CLEVELAND BOTANICAL GARDEN

For the past 26 years, Green Corps has had the privilege of building relationships with high schoolers as they’ve been paid to gain work experience, learn about green jobs, explore sustainable practices, and investigate plants’ many benefits. Green Corps hosts various opportunities for teens to engage in experiential learning.

Our mission: Green Corps introduces youth to career paths in green industries, while inciting interest in trees’ many benefits through hands-on, place-based learning experiences.

While interns benefit from the mentorship of experts as they complete work- based learning in a variety of Holden’s departments, high school groups delve into the skills employed by green practitioners to cultivate healthy ecosystems.

In the end, learners emerge better equipped to employ environmentally friendly practices in their communities, future careers, and interests.

Most of Ohio’s forest is privately owned. Private landowners face a variety of challenges when it comes to land stewardship including succession planning, pests, disease, poor logging practices, pressure from logging companies, and invasive plants. Good forestry addresses these challenges by working with nature so both people AND the woods can thrive. Working Woods is a demonstration site where landowners can learn more about the forestry treatments such as…
- Single Tree Selection Timber Harvest
- Improvement Cutting
- Timber Stand Improvement
- Agroforestry and Non-Timber Forest Products (maple sugaring, native medicinal plants, mushrooms and more)

Working Woods is also a site for research that explores best practices for helping woodland properties evolve from young forested land into older, healthy forests as well as the impact climate change will have on our forests.

Tree Corps Crew (Cleveland-Region Experiential Work) offers a paid job experience, with training in tree-care and related careers for young Cleveland-area residents.

The 8-member Tree Corps Crew spends 6 weeks learning key arboriculture skills, engaging in field experiences, and working on tree and land care related to the Cleveland Tree Plan.

The program concludes with a capstone project and opportunities to shadow green career professionals. CREW provides experience, exposure, and difference-making work for folks who have not otherwise had an opportunity to engage in green careers.

Sprouting Young Scientists is a multi-visit program designed to educate early learners about plant science through literacy and language. Early learners will be engaged in their classroom through a series of books that highlight fictional characters and plant-related topics. Holden Guided lessons accompany the books support early learners in investigating plants through hands-on activities and problem-solving scenarios.

Growing Students in Science: A Community Partnership to Build Interest and Ability in the Sciences is a unique program to Northeast Ohio.

Students in their classrooms can participate in the program for multiple years, starting in the second or third grades and completing the fifth-grade program. Each year students participate in two on-campus or virtual trips to The Holden Arboretum and one classroom visit by Holden staff. New teachers attend professional development workshops held throughout the year. The workshops provide them with tools to teach various hands-on lessons to their students and provide additional activities to reach science standards. All programs align with Ohio’s science content standards.

Each year new districts are asked to consider participation in this multi-year program. All districts are welcome to participate. Most start at second- or third-grade level and progressively add a grade level as the students advance. However, a school can begin at any grade level