Taylor Rick
When Taylor Rick attended Bowman School, she created a Butterfly and Hummingbird garden at Bowman School for her Girl Scout Silver Award project. Throughout the intervening years, the younger girls in her troop have maintained that garden each year by weeding, pruning, making sure the drip system is still working.
When the time came for Taylor to work on her Senior Project and Girl Scout Gold Award, Taylor wanted to build an interpretive walk and met with Linda Desai, the Education Director of Placer Nature Center, to see if she could do something at Placer Nature Center. Linda directed Taylor to Kate Beall, Girl Scout Leader and Master Gardener of the Hummingbird and Butterfly Garden.
Taylor shared with Kate her ideas for a project, and Kate explained what her needs were for the garden at Placer Nature. They collaborated on an idea of creating markers for each of the plants in the garden. Taylor assembled a group of the 6th grade Girl Scout volunteers who have continued the work on the Bowman School Butterfly Garden to help her with the new project. The girls, shown above from left to right, are Katie, Carly, Taylor, Hannah, Sydney and Summer.
Taylor identified each of the plants in the garden and found pictures and descriptions of each of the plants to make garden stakes to mark each of the plants. In all, the Girl Scouts made 26 garden stakes for most of the plants in the garden that show a picture of the plant in bloom and a description of the plant. The younger girls said liked helping improve the garden.
In the process, all of the girls learned about some of the plants in the garden and why butterflies and hummingbirds are attracted to certain plants.
Now visitors to the garden can learn what kind of plant it is and see a picture of what the plant looks like in bloom. Taylor hopes that younger Girl Scouts and community members will enjoy and learn from her work on this project.