A Garden Grows at Ann Richards School

by Kate Rowe | Sep 19, 2025 | Feature, Magazine, Native Plants, People

Sporting a “Support Your Local Birds” t-shirt and wearing binoculars around her neck, 16-year-old Lily Rerecich scanned the area above the entrance to the Wildflower Center Courtyard on a sunny, windy Sunday in March. She quickly identified a bird call and helped a reporter spot Athena, the Center’s resident great horned owl. “I want to dedicate my life to birds,” Lily said.

Lily’s love of birds and nature goes way back. She has been visiting the Wildflower Center ever since her family moved to Austin when she was 2 years old. Not long afterward, her parents planted a garden for Lily in their own backyard. “That first [garden] was like our gift to her … to acknowledge her growing love of the outdoors,” said Lindsay Lawley-Rerecich, Lily’s mother. “It was native plants, because we had exposure to the Wildflower Center.”

That original garden was a sandbox-sized area for Lily to explore her new interest. “We bought the plants, but she got to be the one to lay them out and put them in the ground,” Lindsay said.

Now a tenth grader at Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders in South Austin, Lily has grown — and so have her gardening ambitions. For some time, she has been working to convince her family to replace more of their lawn with wildflowers. And when she noticed a little-used space on her school campus, an idea sprouted.

The pollinator garden sits alongside the school greenhouse, where seedlings are started for future planting projects. PHOTO Carly Aronson

Planning for Pollinators

“I came up with the idea of a pollinator garden because I really am motivated by birds to take action to help people and communities and the planet,” Lily said.

A sign on the garden fence designates the space as a pesticide-free bird and pollinator habitat, highlighting its role in supporting wildlife. PHOTO Carly Aronson

After talking with her school librarian about the idea, she was directed to Carey Warner, a sixth-grade teacher with a special focus on sustainability and gardening. Lily had learned about pocket prairies in a class she took with Ms. Warner, so she knew the teacher to be interested in gardening, planting and service projects. Lily “has been a leader in our community and on our campus in promoting stewardship and appreciation for our campus grounds and nature … since I met her,” Ms. Warner said.

Through her conversations with Ms. Warner, Lily decided to propose creating a pollinator garden in the school courtyard. “It seemed like a really great way to take an existing space and make it into something more beneficial,” Lily said.

She went to work putting together a proposal to submit to the school’s nonprofit foundation, which considers and funds student projects.

Her research included careful consideration of plants that would be good candidates for a pollinator garden. “ I went through the Wildflower Center’s database, looked at all the plants of a certain range … I set a bunch of criteria, and I put it all in a spreadsheet, and I opened all the links to all the plants that fit my criteria,” Lily said. “I started arranging colors and numbers, and then I started running the math on how affordable it would be. I set up areas where I’d plant seeds and areas where I’d put plants, and I looked at the height differences [of the plants].”

Lily Rerecich discusses the day’s garden plan with Carey Warner, her teacher and mentor whose sustainability lessons inspired Lily’s pollinator project. PHOTO Carly Aronson

Lily used this information to build four garden options with different variables, creating color-coded grids mapping out what each would look like, taking into account expected plant growth, height and spread, and calculating cost estimates based on plants, seeds, mulch, soil, and seaweed emulsion supply costs. Her designs included mixes of pollinator-friendly native plants such as Lindheimer’s senna (Senna lindheimeriana), Texas betony (Stachys coccinea), snake herb (Dyschoriste linearis), purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), horse mint (Agastache urticifolia var. glaucifolia), autumn sage (Salvia greggii), flame acanthus (Anisacanthus quadrifidus var. wrightii), mealy blue sage (Salvia farinacea), and zexmenia (Wedelia acapulcensis) plants and seeds. After feedback from Ms. Warner, she fine-tuned the proposal and submitted it in the fall of 2023.

The proposal was quickly accepted, and Lily got to work. She spent time before and after school preparing the future garden space — mainly weeding. She estimates that she spent at least 50 hours in the preparation phase. “I found that I really enjoyed the routine fulfillment of going out and being able to do something tangible with my hands,” Lily said. “My head would drift through whatever was on my mind — books, movies, school assignments.”

LEFT Autumn sage (Salvia greggii) blooms in the Ann Richards School pollinator garden, a favorite of pollinators through much of the year; RIGHT native plantings continue to take root in the courtyard space, transforming it step by step into habitat for birds, butterflies, and bees. PHOTOS Carly Aronson

While Lily had previous experience planting a garden, the 23-by-45-foot school pollinator garden was the largest-scale project she had designed. One of the biggest challenges, Lily noted, was finding the right spots to put plants into more than 1000 square feet of space. With a tape measure in hand and advice and knowledge gathered from others along the way— including Wildflower Center Staff she met at plant sales — Lily figured it out. Students from sixth to twelfth grade joined spring service days, when the bulk of the garden planting was completed.

Lily created a detailed watering schedule for the summer months, collaborating with Ms. Warner to ensure the hard work that went into planting and establishing the garden in the spring continued over the summer months. Her diligence and efforts paid off. “The garden loved it,” Lily said. “It exploded in size, and it literally bloomed nonstop from May to December that year.”

Garden Guests

Since that initial season, the garden has attracted many pollinators including monarchs, gulf fritillaries, long-tailed skippers and more butterflies, along with bumblebees, native Texas bees, cardinals, lesser goldfinches and wrens.

The garden has also attracted its fair share of human helpers.

Situated in the eighth-grade courtyard, the pollinator garden sees students throughout the day and provides opportunities for them to get their hands dirty. Some have participated in garden work service days. “By making it a better space, it’s not only a better place for the ecology, but all for the overall environment” of the school community, Lily notes.

All gardeners face challenges, and Lily has experienced her share of hardships: fire ant encounters, flinging-dirt-from-pitchfork mishaps, and uncertain weather conditions. At times when it was raining and she didn’t have rain gear, Lily improvised water protection by cutting arm holes in a plastic trash bag.

FROM LEFT An elm sphinx (Ceratomia amyntor) takes shelter in the Ann Richards School pollinator garden; Lily Rerecich carefully collects the moth from the foliage; she relocates it to a safer spot — one of many ways the garden now supports both pollinators and student caretakers. PHOTOS Carly Aronson

Lessons Learned

As Lily’s garden has established itself, her plans have continued to expand. She has come to appreciate that a garden is never really ‘“finished” and has an ongoing list of possible improvements: incorporating a water feature; pursuing wildlife habitat and monarch habitat certifications; creating a guide to the garden that future helpers can refer to for information on the plants and layout; starting a seed library; and learning how to propagate and grow plants from cuttings. She’s also working with Ms. Warner to engage younger students to join the school Green Team and learn about caring for the garden. “Lily played a big part in reviving our Green Team and gardening efforts on our new campus, and her strong leadership instigated redesigning and maintaining a garden bed that is the heart of that courtyard,” Ms. Warner said.

Leading by example, Lily Rerecich works alongside classmates to tend the Ann Richards School pollinator garden. PHOTO Carly Aronson

Lily has observed firsthand the positive impact gardens can have, and how they can make people happier and healthier. “I see this as an opportunity to change the impact that our species is having on other living things … Our interactions with the natural world are a place where we can do less harm and do good — like with gardens and with native plants and with how we choose to conduct ourselves. And I really care about that,” she said. “I want to spend my life in a way that helps the birds and the nature I love thrive alongside our species.”