Rebuilding nine beds that are part of the Hewlett-Woodmere Community Garden Learning Center earned Hewlett High School 2024 graduate Stella Fratti the Gold Award, the highest Girl Scout honor.
Fratti, a member of Troop 737, the Five Towns/Valley Stream troop, has been involved in Girl Scouts since second grade.
The beds at the community garden that sit behind Hewlett House on East Rockaway Road in Hewlett, across from the high school, were falling apart. It was a long process as it took two years from approval of the project to completion.
“My project surrounded the community and was community guiding because I wanted to make a better space for people to experience the garden and have the supplies necessary for the foundation to thrive,” Fratti said.
Fratti prizes herself on being “community oriented” and wanted to give back to the community for her project.
“We had to get approval through Girl Scouts, buy the materials, organize the meet-up days and once we had everything it took one non-continuous week to build the beds,” she said.
As a former National Science Honor Society member, she enlisted volunteers from the group for students who needed community service hours.
“We did half of the beds over spring break of my junior year and I paid for that portion from my cookie sales in my troop’s account,” Fratti said. “We received a grant from the Hewlett-Woodmere Public School Endowment Fund for the other half of the project. When the grant came in we were able to complete the remaining five beds.”
She educated the local community on her project at Arts Below Sunrise and Rock Hall Museum in Lawrence, and why it was important for her to do this.
“It’s important for next generations to have this foundation, I grew up in that garden from fifth grade and it’s been very important for me,” she added. “It was very important that we had a space that was put together but also well built and strong.”
Fratti was also President of the Garden Club at HHS and wanted to ensure that future generations have access to the garden.
She officially earned her Gold Award last summer with approval from Girl Scouts and was awarded her Gold at a June 18 ceremony.
Her mother and troop Leader, Laura Fratti, ensured that her daughter knew she was there to help if needed. Laura became the troop’s leader in 2014 and wanted to make sure the projects were “girl driven” and that it’s personal for each girl.
“I really felt it was important for them to do fun things especially when they were younger but it also to instill in the girls to give back to the community,” Laura said. “It’s not about my project, it’s about the girls project.”
In 2016, Stella and her troop mates first visited the community garden and they used their cookie money to build butterfly gardens.
“Our goal was to take the knowledge we learned through building these beds and knowing the proper plants to inform the community about them,” Laura added.
Seeing how “dilapidated” the beds looked, Stella was in agreement with her mother that they needed to be redone and that’s how her Gold Award project was born.
“Scouting has been such an amazing experience for out family and a lot of kids lose their passion for it when other opportunities arise,” Laura said. “These troops in the Five Towns and Valley Steam have really stuck with it and that it a testament to the foundation that was laid.”
