Troop 2158 Builds Raised Garden

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A Tulsa Girl Scout troop is earning more than a patch this week. The girls have spent weeks building a raised flower bed for a woman in an assisted living center who can no longer tend a traditional garden.

Girl Scouts earn patches for activities like camping, horseback riding and painting, but Troop 2158’s newest badge comes from a place of service.

“You get badges for certain things that you like,” one of the troop’s Girl Scouts said.

The project started with a phone call: someone reached out, hoping the girls could help a woman with no family nearby tend to her flower garden. The girls funded the project themselves using money raised from their cookie sales.

“Then from the funds that they made from the cookie sales, they actually purchased the equipment and all of that, all the things to kind of donate this raised garden to this,” troop leader Almira Prince said.

Prince said when the troop got the request, the girls felt it was exactly the kind of project Girl Scouts is about.

“All of our girls are very community-based and love giving back to the community, and they were ecstatic,” Prince said. “They literally designed everything from the corner to the irrigation to what kind of plant.”

The girls even took a field trip to a local nursery to make sure their design would actually work, though the build wasn’t without a few hiccups.

“What have been some of the challenges about it?” Carrico asked. “It looks a little hard.”

“The screws not going in,” one Girl Scout said.

The woman receiving the garden is looking forward to getting her hands in the dirt soon, thanks to the Girl Scouts' work to create a garden she can still enjoy with limited mobility-and she's already invited them over to help her plant it once it's delivered to her assisted living center.

For the girls, the most rewarding part isn’t about earning the badge. “The look on their face,” one Girl Scout said. Thank you, Troop 2158, for making a difference in our community!