Gardens & Horticulture Manager

Gardens & Horticulture Manager

Sanborn Mills Farm | Loudon, New Hampshire

Reports To: Farm Manager and in partnership with the Executive Director

Full-Time | Exempt | $75,000 annually

A Living Landscape

Sanborn Mills Farm (SMF) is a 540-acre nonprofit craft school and working farm in central New Hampshire where land, labor, and learning are inseparable.

We are not a museum, and we are not a reenactment site. We are a living campus where traditional land-based skills are actively practiced in service of a resilient future. Historic methods are used not for display, but because they remain functional, relevant, and instructive today.

Draft horses and oxen work the fields. Grain is grown and milled in our water-powered gristmill. Timber is harvested from our managed woodlot and sawn on site. Sap rises in the spring from our sugarbush in partnership with a local sugarer. Studio programs teach natural dyeing, weaving, woodworking, blacksmithing, tinsmithing, agriculture, and the material disciplines that root human creativity in the land.

Sanborn Mills Farm is a working farm for a resilient future. Our gardens are not decorative edges to that work — they are central to it. They are living classrooms, material sources, ecological systems, and places of public welcome.

The Opportunity

The Gardens & Horticulture Manager is a senior, hands-on leadership role at a formative moment in the life of the institution. As SMF evolves into a year-round educational campus, the gardens are expanding in both scale and significance.

This role will appeal to a practitioner who values craftsmanship, ecological stewardship, design coherence, and the long arc of land-based work. The successful candidate will shape a significant horticultural landscape — not as a designer from a distance, but as a working leader in the soil.

The Gardens & Horticulture Manager leads through daily participation in garden labor, mentors staff, develops cohesive planting strategies, and ensures that ornamental and productive systems align with the farm’s broader agricultural and educational mission.

Garden Systems

The Gardens & Horticulture Manager stewards a diverse and evolving landscape that includes:

• Herbaceous perennial borders and mixed shrub plantings
• Alpine and rock gardens
• Meadow gardens and a streamside woodland garden
• The Founders’ Garden (kitchen, herb, and flower garden)
• A natural dye garden supporting fiber arts workshops
• A teaching garden integrated into programming
• Cut flower production
• Vegetable gardens in collaboration with farm production
• A willow garden
• A small Lord & Burnham greenhouse and a small conservatory
• Seasonal container displays
• Expanding and refining long-term perennial and ecological landscape systems across campus

Core Responsibilities

• Serve as a working manager, performing daily horticultural labor alongside staff
• Supervise and mentor garden assistants, seasonal staff, interns, and volunteers
• Develop and maintain cohesive garden design standards, including plant palettes, seasonal succession, and landscape coherence
• Create long-term planting strategies appropriate to central New Hampshire conditions
• Apply regenerative and ecologically sound horticultural practices
• Lead Integrated Pest Management practices (pesticide applicator’s license required or ability to obtain within 12 months)
• Collaborate with farm leadership to align ornamental and market/productive systems
• Support campus-wide arboriculture initiatives in coordination with forestry consultants and land managers (light-touch collaboration)
• Teach workshops, lead tours, and engage students in hands-on horticultural work
• Develop and manage annual garden operating budgets, staffing, coordinate special projects and support special events.

Qualifications

A formal degree is not required. Education, certification, apprenticeship, or substantial professional horticultural experience will be considered. However, a degree would be desirable. A natural desire and demonstrated ability to work collaboratively within a small, mission-driven team where gardens, agriculture, craft education, and land stewardship intersect.

• Strong ornamental plant knowledge
• Supervisory experience
• Demonstrated ability to work physically and consistently outdoors in all seasons
• Clear communication skills
• Valid driver’s license
• Ecological horticulture experience (helpful)
• Familiarity with invasive species management in New England landscapes (helpful)
• Educational or nonprofit experience (helpful)

Benefits as defined in the SMF Employee Handbook.