New Perennial Garden at Center Street Park

Neighborhood Girl Scout Troop 3032 Enhances Our Park

The summer after 5th-grade, the Girl Scout troop working on their Bronze Award, looked at Center Street Park and thought it needed a little love.The Bronze Award can be earned by Girl Scout Juniors before flying up to Cadettes.  Each upper level of Girl Scouts has a big project award the girls can earn, similar to an Eagle Scout project, but it is a group effort fitting in with the age of the girls.  The Gold Award is for Seniors, Silver Award for Cadettes and the Bronze for Juniors.  The project has to be sustainable, an original idea, led by the girls, paid for by the girls and executed by the girls.The girls interested in working on the Bronze Award met every Thursday evening this summer and brainstormed ideas of how they might serve the community.  Since it was the middle of a beautiful Wisconsin summer, the first meeting was held in Center Street Park.  The girls discussed their interests, hobbies, talents and skills in order to identify a list of projects that might be feasible for them to accomplish and be something they would enjoy doing.   They were also asked to look around the community and see if a need popped out at them.Looking around the park at that first meeting, the girls all felt a perennial garden would help beautify Center Street Park.Girls identified plants that would do well in the garden and would come back year after year.  One girl measured the garden area and drew a scale map of the area to be planted and the girls placed the plants onto the plan.  The girls wrote up notices asking for donations of perennial plants, and sold homemade bracelets and did face-painting at Chilli'n On The Avenue in order to raise money for the project.On Saturday, September 21, the Girl Scout troop set to work!  The sod was removed, the soil tilled and the delightfully overwhelming amount of donated plants were placed in the ground.  Alderman, Bobby Pantuso arranged for the city to deliver 2 yards of mulch, which was spread liberally over the garden to keep weeds down and moisture in.The Girl Scout Junior Troop 3032 would like to thank their donors: Bobby Pantuso, Jason Odrzywolski, Mary Connolly-Leubner, Heather Terrence, Stephanie Hicks, Julie Dalton, Julie Crook Guckenberg, Michelle Duckert-Braze, Colleen Wilkens, Cathy Bemis and Nancy Hall.The Girl Scout troop also wants to help elderly or disabled persons with their fall yard maintenance on October 12.  If you or someone you know could use this service, please contact Cindy Anderson at [mailto]mc.anderson1@sbcglobal.net[/mailto].