Volunteering

The Yorkshire Arboretum has over 150 volunteers who work alongside the small staff team to care for and develop this lovely place, creating memorable experiences for our visitors. We are indebted to them all for their dedication, skills and enthusiasm.

In return, our volunteers get the chance to work in glorious surroundings with like-minded colleagues, to gain new skills to enhance a CV, to meet visitors from around the world and to know they are playing a vital role in helping the arboretum fulfil its potential.

We offer a variety of volunteer roles which will suit different interests, abilities and time availability including:

  • Caring for the trees and arboretum grounds, working mostly outdoors and involving physical work

  • Helping with school and group visits, often outdoors

  • Helping to welcome visitors and ensure they enjoy their time at the arboretum

  • Helping with administration or office based tasks

  • Encouraging more people to visit the arboretum by helping with our marketing programme

  • Helping with weddings or our events programme

  • One-off events such as bulb planting sessions where we'd welcome your help just for the day

What we offer our volunteers:

  • Training and support in learning new skills

  • Invitations to events, talks and activities

  • Regular updates on what's happening at the arboretum

  • The chance to meet like-minded people

  • A free tea or coffee on the days you volunteer

And for volunteers who give 40 hours or more in a calendar year:

  • Free annual membership to the Yorkshire Arboretum

  • A Castle Howard staff card giving free admission and discounts on purchases

The volunteer roles currently available are listed below. If no vacancies are listed, or if none of the ones currently available appeals to you, please bookmark this page and visit often as we post new opportunities regularly.

CURRENT VOLUNTEERING VACANCIES:

Tree Health Volunteer - Wednesdays

Working with: Head of Tree Health, Volunteer co-ordinators and other volunteers

What skills and experience do I need?

•        Full training given - experience in use of maps, basic tree identification and aspects of natural history would be helpful but not required.

•        A willingness to work alongside fellow volunteers under the guidance of a team leader

•        Any individuals with specific skills in plant health, ecology, education and database maintenance would make valuable team members.

To keep the tree collection on our 120 acres healthy, we need dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers to join our tree health team to carry out tree health surveillance in line with our annual plan.

If you are interested in this role or have particular skills or experience that you think might be useful to us within other areas or are looking for something a little different, such as a day's group volunteering, please contact our Volunteer Coordinator on volunteer@yorkshirearboretum.org, telling us a little about yourself and why you think you could help, or what you would like to do, and include a phone number so we can contact you for a chat.