Eagle Scout completes Marian garden for parish

By Aaron Zylla
For The Visitor
7/16/10

I recently became an Eagle Scout with Troop 4 in Sauk Rapids. One requirement of the Eagle rank is a service project for the community. For my project I elected to finish something my parish, St. John Cantius in St. Cloud, had been working on for 10 years — a Marian garden. They already had a small garden, with a statue of Mary at its center.

A Marian garden includes plants and flowers with special specific meaning to Mary, and the garden is also named in her honor. Among others, we included peonies which represent Mary’s rose and tulips which represent Mary’s prayer.

The general garden planning was generously provided by Scenic Landscaping. My project involved adding more plants to the existing garden, digging up sod for additional garden area and completely redesigning the entire garden. However, Mary stayed where she was, as it would have been hard to move a five-foot cement statue.

Rain, and snow!
So the work began, with help from many Scouting friends and from people in the community. On the day that 10 other people worked on the project with me, we achieved quite a bit. Without them, I could still be working on this project. The entire project took over 140 hours of work. (Forty hours are required, and most Eagle Scout projects range from 40 to 60 hours.)

The entire project was not without problems though. Murphy’s Law affects even Eagle Scout projects, and many little glitches occurred. Once we had a bad rain. Even worse, on one of the final work days of the project, we had two inches of snow. Needless to say, we had to wait a couple of days before working again.

Another issue was to get lumber for the new arbor — I had visited several lumber providers looking for donations. Eventually, Mathew Hall Lumber Company donated all the lumber I needed. With that I could begin work on the arbor my sister Angie had volunteered to design and build.

When my crews had done their prep work and were ready to start adding plants, I contacted local plant nurseries for contributions. Scenic Landscaping came through again and donated most of the plants for our garden.

Donations made it possible
Another important gift came from Patricia Becker, a member of our own parish who helped me. She offered roses and peonies and many other flowers from her own garden.

The Stone House provided lunch for our work crew one day. My parents’ company, Zylla Consulting Group, furnished lunch and pop another day. I greatly appreciate all of these donations.

Having fun while working in hot weather, or in the rain, is always not so easy, but when you have friends with you, it’s not so bad. Besides counting for a requirement for the rank of Eagle, working with friends was the best part of the project. Although the worst part was the amount of work, we worked hard to achieve this goal and it turned out very well. Once the garden was completed, I turned its maintenance back to the parish.

Zylla, son of Leonard and Margaret Zylla, will be a freshman at Dakota State University in Madison, S.D., hoping to study network administration, and security.