The French Heritage Society and Magnolia Plantations

So how did I end up with the pleasure of spending my summer working at french gardens? Which gardens am I working at? How can I afford this? Last October, I went on a trip with the horticulture club at NC State because they were visiting garden's I hadn't been to before. I tagged along and we saw a few places, including Magnolia Plantation in South Carolina. (It's a lovely place, you should visit!)Tom Johnson, the garden's director, gave our group a tour of the main gardens and it's relevant history before letting us loose on the grounds. While he was talking, he mentioned an internship exchange program with France that the gardens supports, and that they wanted a really great pool of applicants this year. I finished my Masters in May, and wouldn't need to start paying back student loans until November. This summer is my last chance to do something really fun before I have to negotiate vacation time with my employer. The moral of this story is: always go on university organized trips. I've only ever had awesome things come out of them.

I put in my application to the gardens and was interviewed by a panel of garden staff and members of Charleston's Alliance Francaise. I was a little worried about my french skills, since I have barely used the language since high school, but I really couldn't pass up the opportunity for such an adventure! Magnolia Plantations covers the cost of my flight to and from France, and the French Heritage Society arranges the internship with three french gardens with one month spent at each and covers the train tickets to get there. This year, the gardens that are involved are Le Chateau de Brecy, Le Chateau d'Acquigny, and Le Jardin Botanique de Vauville. They're all in Normandie and look to be amazing places in very different ways. Brecy is very french and formal, Acquigny is in the romantic style, and Vauville is very exotic.

Magnolia Plantations supports the internship to foster cultural exchange through horticulture between the US where they are located and France where the owning family is originally from. The French Heritage Society was organized to help restore french architecture through tax-deductible donations to the non-profit, but they also support a number of exchange internships.