by Katie Kemp

A Gold Award serves as the crowning achievement of a Girl Scout’s time in scouting. Planned, executed and completed during the Scout’s senior year of high school, the project serves as the culmination of the lessons learned over the years and a reflection of what they’d like their scouting legacy to be. For Willow Harper, the inspiration for her Gold Award came from, of all places, her own backyard.

“The year prior to starting my project, I planted my own raised bed garden in my backyard. Out of curiosity, I planted some milkweed to see if I could really attract monarchs to my garden with them,” she said. 

It worked – that year she estimates between 30 and 50 monarch caterpillars appeared in her garden. As she watched them grow and began to do more research on monarch butterflies, she learned that pesticide use was contributing to a declining population. With her senior year on the horizon, it made perfect sense to use her Gold Award to take action.

Willow joined Girl Scouts in 2006 when she was just 5 years old. It’s a significant accomplishment to graduate from scouting, and graduating with a Gold Award is even more impressive.

Fewer than 6 percent of eligible Scouts will earn their Gold Award, and it takes significant time, dedication and community involvement to attain.

For her Gold Award, Willow decided to create a space where the community could not just observe the beauty she found in monarch butterflies, but a place where they could be protected. The garden’s mission would be to educate the community on the simple things they could do to help boost a declining population.

With the wheels in motion for a butterfly garden, Willow got to work and pieces started to fall into place. She contacted Ellen Smith Elementary School, where she attended, to see if they would be interested in providing the location for the garden. “As it turns out, Ryan Raup, a teacher at Ellen Smith and the father of my friend (and fellow troop member) Madeline, had created a vegetable garden a year or so prior, so the school was very excited to expand upon it with a butterfly garden.”

A Gold Award requires several steps before it can go into motion. Scouts must identify an issue in their community, research it thoroughly and present a plan to take action to the local council. Once her plan was approved, Willow spent the fall of her senior year creating a general layout plan for the garden as well as lesson plans about the butterfly life cycle and pollination. She started sowing seeds for the garden plants in her own greenhouse to gear up for the spring, when she planned to open the garden. She set up everything in the garden herself – from the waterproof cedar raised bed frame and the soil to the garden’s first plants.

“I didn’t have a wheelbarrow and didn’t have enough budget room to purchase one, so I moved roughly 2.5 cubic yards of dirt with nothing but my shovel.”

Once the garden was constructed and the plants from her home garden were in place, Willow added flowering plants. Using some leftover boards from the garden bed frame, she crafted a sign that tells visitors what kinds of plants are in the garden and includes a tribute to her original troop leader, Leslie Cagle.

“She fostered my love of scouting and got me interested in camping and nature itself,” Willow said. “It was heartbreaking when she unexpectedly passed away in 2010.” The garden is dedicated in her memory.

While the planning and construction of the garden are complete, Willow doesn’t consider her project to be done just yet. This year, Willow will teach a class of fourth grade students at Ellen Smith about the importance of monarch butterflies and other pollinators to the health of the planet – with the garden as a hands-on learning tool.

The garden has been a wild success so far, with plants producing seed pods for the next growing season and – most importantly – a host of butterflies and caterpillars stopping by to check it out.

It was her enthusiasm for the outdoors and gardening that inspired the project, but Willow feels that she’s grown, too. “I feel more confident communicating my ideas with others and working in a team toward a common goal after working closely with Ellen Smith staff and the Gold Award counsel,” she said.

Now a student at the University of Central Arkansas, Willow has been able to use the skills she learned as a Girl Scout to connect her love of nature with the world around her and get others excited about it, too. With a full, vibrant garden ready to educate and inspire students, that love can only continue to grow.