VOLUNTEERING: Marcia Davis
Hands in the soil: Former town of Ogden personnel director now part of a team that cares for the gardens at George Eastman Museum
By Mike Costanza
Back in June of 2018, Marcia Davis had just retired from her job as the town of Ogden’s personnel director and was wondering what to do with her days.
At the suggestion of some friends, she applied to become a volunteer for the George Eastman Museum, hoping to help care for the nonprofit’s extensive gardens.
“I’m not an expert on plants,” the 70-year-old Henrietta resident said. “When I volunteered, I said ‘You just point me in the right direction. I’m good with manual labor.’”
She started giving her time and energy to the nonprofit that July. Just about every week since then, the married mother of one grown daughter has spent eight hours or more helping to keep its gardens in top shape.
Located on East Avenue, the George Eastman Museum offers visitors extensive exhibits of photographs and photographic equipment, the chance to watch classic films in the Dryden Theatre and the opportunity to tour the mansion that photography pioneer George Eastman once called home. During the growing season, they can stroll through gardens filled with many species of colorful, fragrant flowers and other plants. On a warm summer day, just the scent of them can lift you from the doldrums.
Davis and about 100 other volunteers plant flowers, weed, prune plants, rake up leaves and perform other tasks from April through November to keep the green spaces beautiful.
“We do anything that you would do at home gardening, except on a different scale,” Davis said.
Each October, she helps prepare tulips for Dutch Connection, an annual event that celebrates Eastman’s love of flowers. As part of the preparations, the volunteers pot the large numbers of tulip bulbs that had been imported from Holland.
“We set up an assembly line with about 15 volunteers.’ Davis said. “We pot those in a couple thousand clay pots and we put them in cold storage.”
The tulips are then taken to a nursery in Avon and kept in cold storage. At the right time, they are warmed and forced to sprout, then prepared for display in the historic mansion.
This year, the building was filled with thousands of colorful tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, amaryllis and other flowers from Feb. 7-23. Davis was on hand to help water and tend to the plants and serve the thousands of visitors who came to see them.
But for the time they spend on Dutch Connection, almost all of the volunteers who work on the museum’s gardens go home in November. Davis and one other stay to clean and sharpen gardening tools, help with snow removal and do other jobs during the off season.
In reward for her services, Davis gets free admission to the museum for herself and two guests and to the Dryden for regular films, but that isn’t really the reason she gives the nonprofit her time and energy.
“The gardens are so nice and the people are so appreciative of your help that it motivates you to come back,” she said.
She also enjoys just working in the museum’s gardens.
“I love getting my hands dirty digging into the soil and seeing the final product afterwards,” she said.