The strong aroma of camellias and Carolina allspice leaves greeted plant enthusiasts at the university’s botanical gardens walking tour Thursday afternoon. Held every spring to highlight the plants available for sale at the annual plant show, the event is a hands-on experience for attendees to learn about plant species and maintenance.

John Frett, director of the gardens and professor of landscape and horticulture at the university, began the tour at the Fischer Greenhouse Laboratory. During the tour, he passed around leaves of each plant, asked visitors to smell them, described how the plant grows and provided attendees with care instructions for each species.

Frett explained that the Fothergilla gardenii, the Latin name for the suckering shrubs that guests first saw on the tour, were actually three feet taller than the plants’ typical height of two to three feet. He says the university carries a rare hybrid of the plant that allows it to grow to six feet. Next, he took guests through a dark covering of shrubbery and explained why the Florida anis trees surrounding them smelled like a market full of rotting fish.

Frett says the gardens exist mainly as a teaching tool for students and visitors from the community and different parts of the country who want to learn about plant growth and care. He says the garden is used extensively by many classes within the department of plant and soil sciences, by wildlife and ecology students for collecting insects and by the art and fashion departments for sculpture and draping projects.

However, he says maintaining the gardens can be difficult due to a shortage of money and manpower.

“I’m constantly struggling trying to find additional sources of revenue,” Frett says. “I figure we have less than half the staff we really need so it’s always a constant struggle to try to sustain and hopefully improve that over time.”

Frett says the university’s gardens have been in operation on campus for nearly 60 years. Every year, to raise funds for the garden and the programs it supports, Frett and his team of interns, paid staff and volunteers host a plant sale, typically held on Ag Day, a community event to educate participants about natural resources and agriculture. This year, the sale will take place on April 27 and April 28 and will feature camellias.

Laurie Jones, 60, a bookkeeper for a residential construction company in Maryland, says since her own garden features a wide array of camellias, she attended the tour to see the university’s collection of the flowers.

Jones says she first wanted to buy the plant after reading a piece by Charles Cresson, the Pennsylvania director of the American Camellia Society and founder of the Swarthmore Horticultural Society, that explained how to care for camellias. Cresson will speak more about the camellias in a ceremony on April 25 at the Fischer Greenhouse Laboratory on campus to honor the garden’s patrons.

“There’s just something so wonderful and meditative about working with gardens and working with the plants,” Jones says. “It’s just a very peaceful, wonderful thing—and the results are incredible.”

Melinda Zoehrer, assistant director of the gardens, began working at the university as a student in the Longwood Gardens graduate program in public horticulture. She says the university would not be able to maintain the gardens without the help of local citizens.

“We couldn’t do our jobs without our volunteers because the gardens are vast,” Zoehrer says. “There are 15 gardens down here.”

Junior Brian Kuntzmann, a landscape horticulture and design major, became a horticultural assistant three years ago after taking a botany course with Frett during his freshman year. He says maintaining the plants in the nursery and on the ground, mowing the grass, pruning existing trees and planting new ones feed his passion for botany.

“I’ve always loved being outside and being out in nature and I’ve always liked working with my hands,” Kuntzman says. “So this internship is a good combination of the two. I love watching things grow.”

Kuntzmann says he wishes more students paid attention to the gardens, since he and the rest of the team put a considerable amount of work into maintaining the grounds.

“I think it would be cool if students were more interested in the gardens,” he says. “We work really hard down here to keep everything growing, so I think it would be cool that students would appreciate it.”