We welcome students and all individuals from the community, as well as group work parties, corporate volunteer days, and more!
Our greatest need for volunteers is during the summer, especially July, August and September.
Who May Volunteer
- UW students, staff, faculty, employees
- UW students who are volunteering for a class, internship, research or project
- Community members and groups not affiliated with UW, the general public
- Individuals 18 and older. Accommodations may be possible for supervised youth.
How to Sign Up
Step 1
Complete the seasonal questionnaire, even if you have volunteered in a previous quarter. This step allows the UW Farm to collect information on user-ship for the farm for each quarter and adds you to our sign-in sheets that we use on a daily basis.
Step 2
Please sign up to be a volunteer via the UWBG website.
This helps us track volunteers and insures you in case of injury. This is a one time application no matter how frequently you volunteer.
Our work day revolves around the seasons, planting and harvests for most of the year. The UW Farm has three growing sites!
Locations: Mercer Court, McMahon Hall, Center for Urban Horticulture (CUH)
You may find yourself involved in any one of the following activities when you arrive for a shift:
- Working with other volunteers, team projects
- Picking, washing, packing produce for campus dining, CSA program, or the food pantry
- Starting seeds and making soil blocks
- Preparing beds for planting, including moving compost, tilling, making raised beds
- Weeding by hand using various farm tools
- Direct seeding and transplanting crop “starts” in the greenhouse, in farm plots
- Working with organic fertilizers
- Pruning, dividing and caring for perennial flowers, fruit trees and shrubs
- Removing invasive plants
- Installing Drip Irrigation
- Making flower bouquets or caring for the farm’s flowers
- Other tasks related to maintaining the farm’s produce production and management of perennial plants
Have a large group?
Please contact uwfarm@uw.edu for academic related, UW courses, labs and field trips.
Please contact urbhort@uw.edu for non-UW field trip requests, volunteer work parties, and corporate visits.
We ask that you contact us at least two weeks in advance of when you would like to visit the farm.
Though all our volunteer activities are outside, group size is limited to 30 individuals total.