Question
My mother has national display garden for the American Hemerocallis society that is larger than she can manage alone (as she approaches her 70th birthday).  Are you aware of any LI resources for volunteer gardening help or affordable gardners in Suffolk County (near Medford is best).  I no longer live on LI and am trying to arrange for help for her for the coming season. Any suggestions on who I might contact?  

Answer
Gardening is a heavy lifting activity, Debi - Bravo to your mother for taking her gardening work this far.

Volunteer gardeners are hard to find for the large public gardens and museums here.  Although many Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk) high schools now have a community service requirement which would certainly consider your mother a worthy candidate, high school students can be notoriously unreliable.  But as a backup, I think it would be worth it to get on the list of several high school guidance offices for hard labor in your mother's garden, especially if your mother was able to arrange to have them picked up/dropped off.  (My daughter would be the first volunteer.  Alas, she is in Nassau.)

First choice, however, is something I do myself each summer.  And that involves contacting Cornell University's Agriculture School/Horticulture Dept and SUNY Farmingdale for honest-to-goodness gardening students as live-in gardeners during the summer.  I have a lot of involved work during the summer because our garden is totally organic, and I do so much amending each year to build up the soil.  But for a modest stipend and free living quarters, I have full time help with no worries about whether or not the Roses were watered this morning or if the lawn was mowed on schedule.  Send me a private followup question and I will give you contact details if you want to pursue that option.  

That said, your mother must have one gorgeous garden.  They bloom almost all summer long.