This summer, she got some extra help transforming part of the flower bed into a pollinator garden from a local Girl Scout.
Emily Shoker is an Ambassador Girl Scout for troop 41988. When it came time for her Gold Award project last year, she chose to hone in on a way to help tackle environmental issues.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot I could change, so I decided to start small,” Shoker wrote. “Helping educate my community on the benefits of pollinator gardens was one way I could contribute to something bigger than myself.”
Shoker spent time researching pollinator gardens and attending environmental commission meetings before her work began. After presenting her plan, she said the commission shared advice and helped get her connected with resources. Shoker worked with Shademakers Nursery, which agreed to donate the plants.
This past winter, Shoker organized a team of volunteers to help weed and maintain the area ahead of planting the pollinator garden in June.
Now, her section of the flower bed features native plants like purple joe-pye weed, winged loosestrife, Ohio goldenrod and more. The garden includes a plaque with a link to more information about pollinator gardens and their importance. Shoker said her project grew from a way to be environmentally active to an educational project to inform the community about the importance of native plants and pollinators.
Taking Shoker’s lead, Pennock said she’s working to incorporate more local pollinators into the rest of the garden, too. Right now, the garden is mostly made up of purple coneflowers, but she’s hoping to add more variety over time.
“If you poke around [the garden], you’ll see about a half dozen plants in tomato cages. Those are the ones that I have set out this year,” Pennock said. “We’ll do more next spring, and eventually this whole thing will be nothing but native plants.”
Jessica Greene, assistant city manager for Oxford and Shoker’s troop leader, said Shoker’s project was a yearlong, self-led process.
“It’s a really hard project,” Greene said. “It requires over 80 hours of work, oftentimes is more than a year in length and planning and research for this young woman to do. It’s completely independently led, so she had to do all of this, to navigate all of this with guidance, but on her own.”
Shoker initially planned to plant her garden in Oxford itself, but the city government had more layers of requirements to get through, so Shocker had to pivot to Township property based on her own time constraints. Shoker is studying as a freshman in college this year at University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
In the future, Greene said she hopes Shoker’s project lays the groundwork for other girl scouts to pursue pollinator garden projects within the city limits.
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