At Wave Hill, John Nally interns dig into gardening careers and personal growth

As sunlight spilled over Wave Hill’s gardens, blooming with spring foliage, three new hires of the John Nally Intern Program tended to the grounds with quiet focus. Gloves stained with dirt, they trimmed bits of ivy winding across the stone walls, and sat with their knees in the soil, uprooting plants to make room for new growth.

David Montalvan, Allie Wornell and Jack Jacobsen have spent the last few weeks pruning, watering, pulling up weeds, laying fresh mulch and planting bright, new greenery to maintain Wave Hill’s 28-acre estate.

The John Nally program is a hands-on apprenticeship that runs from early spring until late fall, intended for those who want to deepen their understanding of horticulture, according to Wave Hill. Nally, who the program was named after, was the curator of Wave Hill’s gardens until 1988.

According to Wave Hill’s 2024 newsletter, 70 percent of their current staff members are former John Nally interns. The program marked a pivotal moment in interns’ lives, and acted as a solidified pathway towards a new career, the garden said. Other alumni have taken on various roles in the horticulture field. Among the 2023 interns, one went on to work at a private firm that tends to spaces from Riverdale gardens to Manhattan rooftops, another is a seasonal gardener at Sleepy Cat Farm in Connecticut and a third is working to develop a new park in Queens.

This year’s three interns come from varied professional and academic backgrounds, yet share a common drive to build the experience needed for a position at Wave Hill, or beyond.

Former graphic designer turned novice gardener David Montalvan

David Montalvan, 46, worked for over two decades as a corporate graphic designer before pivoting to horticulture. He said it feels good to be new at something.

In his past design work, Montalvan was primarily focused on children’s clothes — “a lot of teddy bears and butterflies all day,” he said. But, he described it as fast fashion, and said it started to wear on him that he was negatively impacting the environment.

His exhaustion with the industry was gradual, he said, furthered by the loss of his dad and brother after the pandemic. In his grief, he began to reevaluate how he wanted to spend his time and make a living. Just over a year ago, he started volunteering with Wave Hill, and was drawn to the internship to develop skills needed to become a garden guide.

“The tactile nature of just having my hands in the soil is therapeutic,” Montalvan said.

The Brooklyn native, who moved to Independence Avenue about eight years ago, said he still does some freelance graphic design work, creates dioramas and is interested in illustrating children’s books. But, a lot of his inspiration comes from being in nature.

Removing weeds, watering plants and learning how they grow satisfied his “need for new knowledge,” Montalvan explained. “It’s nice to be square one … The ceiling is vast, and I’ll never really be able to fully know everything.”

Recent grad Allie Wornell sees art in horticulture

Before 23-year-old Allie Wornell was an intern in the John Nally program, she was creating her own major at Smith College that let her take as many plant and landscape courses as she could. Now, the recent graduate is set on securing a full-time role at Wave Hill.

Wornell found her love for horticulture shortly after she graduated high school, when she spent time helping manage the grounds at Camphill, a community in the Hudson Valley where individuals with developmental disabilities live and work alongside others.

She said she appreciated how tangibly gardening contributes to people’s lives, and various niches the field allows. Wornell’s background in drawing led her to hone into the creative side of horticulture, and she emphasized the value of greenery in an urban space. 

“For me, gardening is very much the ability to paint with live plants and create a space that transports people,” she said.

Wornell recently moved from Massachusetts to Washington Heights for the John Nally internship. Outside of gardening-related hobbies, she enjoys reading, knitting, crocheting and baking — or “How to be a grandma 101,” she joked.

Jack Jacobsen, rock musician and aspiring landscape company owner

Jack Jacobsen, a 25-year-old from Hastings-on-Hudson, is a rock musician with a degree from the State University of New York in screenwriting. But alongside his creative pursuits, he always had a love for the outdoors, he said.

As a teenager, Jacobsen’s first job was for a gardening company in his hometown, and the interest stuck. One day, he and his brother, who is an arborist, want to open their own full-service landscaping company in Wisconsin — Jacobsen’s brother would tend to the trees, and Jacobsen to the plants.

After graduating, Jacobsen said he swore off formal learning, but his time so far at Wave Hill has led him to rethink that viewpoint.

“It’s nice to learn,” he said. “I thought there’s a cap on how much information your brain could hold, I don’t think that’s true though.”

Jacobsen hopes to gain experience on the more complex parts of horticulture. He knows how to lay mulch and dig holes, he said, but is interested in the design aspect of building a garden, which he believes he can learn at Wave Hill.