School Garden Redesign

In 2023-2024, my daughter and kids from her girl scout troop finished a year-long Bronze Award project to build a pollinator and sensory garden at their elementary school. It was a really big project for fifth graders.

And they did it.

They mentored the younger scouts with adult helpers - over 40 kids helped put the garden in the ground. Scouts in K-5 all working together for a common goal.

With lots and lots of help from scout families, our local Facebook Free Swap and Plant Swap, local gardeners who gifted us native plants from their own yards, a generous grant the scouts secured from Wild Ones, a grant from the Webster Groves Women's Garden Club allocated from our PTO, a gorgeous array of sensory herbs donated by the Webster Groves Herb Society plant sale, a beautiful variety of 20+ species of Missouri native plants sourced from @greenscapegardens_stl, donated plants from a local church's pollinator garden, the expertise of a scout parent who helped the scouts build a bug hotel on site (yay power tools!), and so many more contributions large and small ...

All of these kids came together to completely redesign the school garden in a way that supports the local ecosystem with greater biodiversity (20+ species of native plants!) and contributes to beautifying the shared space for the whole school to enjoy.

Wow. There is power in community and cooperation. So proud to be part of this project.