Girl Scouts revive OACS Kindness Garden

Be you. Be kind. Be the light. Be a rainbow on a rainy day.

Fifth-graders at Oakland Avenue Charter School are spreading goodwill one rock at a time with the reintroduction of the Kindness Garden. Former students Libby Kohmetscher and Skyla Vega created the rock garden to earn the Girl Scout Bronze Award.

“I’m very excited to see it take shape,” said OACS Principal Pam Dwyer. “I love what they’ve accomplished. I’m excited to see more rocks added to see kindness be spread.”

Sixth-graders Libby and Skyla, who are members of Girl Scout Troop 1773 in West Orange County, came up with the idea of reviving the garden.

“They needed to do a service project that was related to getting this achievement for Girl Scouts,” Dwyer said. “We had started a rock garden a few years ago with the art department, and then (it was stopped because of) COVID. There were a few rocks here and there that were basically being buried. (They said), ‘Let’s get this back to life,’ basically. They wanted this place where people can go and leave a rock and take a rock.”

Before they leave The Nest, the nickname for the school, all fifth-grade OACS Eagles will paint a rock to leave their mark in the garden.

“The fifth-graders will continue the legacy each year,” Dwyer said.

The Kindness Garden is located in a grassy area between the main building and two modular art and music classrooms. It surrounds a tree within a short wooden fence. The painted rocks will fill in a heart-shaped area; white rocks cover the rest of the garden. In addition, there is a border of about 200 faded painted rocks, designed by previous students, that were dug up when the scouts were preparing the garden.

Skyla and Libby painted a few rocks as part of the 2023 graduating fifth-grade class and added them to the roughly 100 colorful rocks designed by their classmates in the school’s art room. Skyla’s favorite rock reads “Ohana means family.” Libby’s favorite is one painted by Skyla that says, “Be a rainbow on a rainy day.”

Libby and Skyla’s garden includes a sign on the tree that says, “Kindness Garden, Take one for motivation, share one for inspiration, or add one to help our garden grow.” Their names and troop number are there too.

The entire process took about two months.

BUILDING THE GARDEN

The girls solicited donations for the materials, looking at Lowe’s and Home Depot for ideas and prices. Libby said they selected their supplies after coming up with the plan for the garden. The Kindness Garden project ended up being the monthly sponsored project at Lowe’s, and the building supply store donated items.

“I think it goes nicely with our community,” Dwyer said of the garden. “I think it aligns with what we’re about … that we’re here for the community and we’re here because of the community, so we want to remember them.”

The girls just want everyone to be happy.

“We wanted to create it because sometimes people just have bad days, and you just want to be able to cure that any way that you can,” Skyla said. “So we just decided to create a Kindness Garden so everybody could have a better day.”