4 minute read
Growing Memories: Boy Scout Creates Texas' First Inclusive Scatter Garden
by Charlotte Kovalchuk • photos courtesy of the Suggs Family
Most community projects Boy Scouts take on for their Eagle Scout rank cost about $500, and they typically don’t involve months of presentations to countless individuals and groups to raise $20,000 for a scatter garden. But when 15-year-old Trevor Suggs learned that Georgetown Parks and Recreation wanted to add a scatter garden to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) Cemetery, he knew he needed to make it his Eagle Scout project.
ONE-OF-A-KIND PROJECT
After an unfruitful search for an exciting project idea, Troop 405 member Trevor turned to Ron Garland, who sits on the Georgetown City Council and Scouting’s Capitol Area Council. Councilman Garland encouraged him to reach out to Parks and Recreation about helping their scatter garden dream become a reality.
A formal area to scatter a loved one’s ashes, scatter gardens can be any design, shape, or size, with bed materials ranging from rocks to sand to plants. Trevor plans to create a rectangular scatter garden and fill it with colorful stones. He will also include a memorial wall, 20-foot flagpole, two stone benches, and a 950-square-foot concrete walkway in the northernmost section of the IOOF Cemetery, which is located behind Southwestern University.
The scatter garden will be available to everyone, both veterans and civilians, and will be the first of its kind in Texas. It is a needed service, Trevor says, as about 50 percent of Texans choose to be cremated, and this scatter garden project will enable individuals to be respectfully memorialized without taking up large amounts of real estate. It will also ease the burden for funeral homes by providing a place for unclaimed ashes. “I wanted to help out the community with a very beneficial and long-lasting project that would make a significant impact,” Trevor says.
Additionally, the project will be ADA compliant and feature a low scatter bed border, which will allow easy access for children. “I am making sure all kinds of people will be able to access this new scatter garden,” Trevor says. Having experienced family deaths at an early age, he has a special place in his heart for kids in situations like his. “I was only five years old when my first grandfather died, so I wanted to make sure young children (like I once was) would be able to access the scattering bed.”
EAGLE SCOUT JOURNEY
Trevor’s scatter garden project has been a major undertaking from the beginning, including fundraising efforts that involved him presenting his idea to individuals and groups in the area. He garnered $20,000 in three months, with major donors including State Representative Terry Wilson, State Senator Charles Schwertner, Judge Billy Ray Stubblefield, Congressman John Carter, Georgetown Mayor Josh Schroeder, and Sport Clips founder Gordon Logan. Trevor also received several thousand dollars’ worth of material donations from Lauren Concrete and Superior Stone.
Since receiving project approval from the cemetery’s management (Parks and Recreation) and his Scouting Troop leaders, Trevor has been working with Georgetown-based Covey Planning and Landscape Architects and five other vendors on various project components. He is also recruiting fellow Scouts and cemetery volunteers to help build the garden, with a ribbon cutting planned around Memorial Day.
This Eagle Scout project, Trevor adds, has been an amazing learning experience. “What I’ve most enjoyed about this project is learning more about things I had never learned before. I didn’t know the difference between concrete and mortar, I didn’t know anything about rock quarries or stone construction, and I didn’t even know how to make a PowerPoint presentation. Learning all this has been a real blast.”
