Girl Scout Leader Suzanne Hale, Swampscott Conservatory President Toni Bandrowicz, interim Town Administrator Gino Cresta, Effie Cobbett, and Select Board Chair Katie Phelan cut the ribbon. || Monica Sager The space is across the street from the middle school. ||. Monica Sager Effie Cobbett sits in her new land enhancement project. || Monica Sager Effie Cobbett and her family at the ribbon cutting. || Monica Sager People gathered Saturday for the ribbon cutting. ||. Monica Sager There is a natural, unstructured play space to foster imagination ||. Monica Sager Signs explain the purpose of the space and species in the area ||. Monica Sager Swampscott Conservatory President Toni Bandrowicz, interim Town Administrator Gino Cresta, Effie Cobbett, and Select Board Chair Katie Phelan ||. Monica Sager
Swampscott High School graduate and Girl Scout Effie Cobbett cut the ribbon to her Muskrat Pond conservation land enhancement project on Saturday.
About 40 people gathered across from the Swampscott Middle School Saturday morning for the unveiling of the Cobbett’s Girl Scout Gold Award project. For the highest honor within the Girl Scouts, Cobbett restored a neglected parcel of conservation land, opening it for public use.
“The seed of this started about six years ago,” Cobbett said in her ribbon cutting speech. “I walked past here every day on my to the middle school and home, and I would see people just throwing entire trash bags right next to a water source that feeds into an area that used to be full of animals that I used to see when I was younger, but I noticed how it’s decreased over the years. I wanted to change that.”
After choosing her location for her project, Cobbett noticed there were a lot of invasive species within the area. Part of the Gold Award project was to remove the invasive species. There’s a sign at the front of the area too that explains what invasive species are and why native species are so important.
“Over the years (this space) deteriorated. It was an eye sore, a blight on the entire town,” Director of Public Works and interim Town Administrator Gino Cresta said. “So when (Effie) came up with this idea, I thought it was great.”
The project also included a natural, unstructured play space to foster imaginative thinking for children. There are some stepping logs, a bench and other natural items for children to engage with.
“I like the bench,” Cobbett told the Swampscott Tides. “It’s that there’s a feature in here that allows you just to enjoy it.”
A sign near the walkway into the conservation area shares that the undefined play allows children to explore without predescribed rule, allowing for a rock to be a seat one time and an animal during the next visit. The writing also suggests that this leads to children having an “increased ability to problem solve, because they will approach problems from different perspectives.”
In addition to allowing children to explore on their own, Cobbett told the Swampscott Tides that she created a curriculum for third and seventh grade interaction with the space.
“The third graders can’t get all the way over here, but they can come out after school, and the seventh graders could come in and take a look around and see what native plants they can find and see what invasive species they can find,” Cobbett said.
Toni Bandrowicz the Swampscott Conservancy’s president, shared that the group has also been “trying very hard to get youth involved in projects that benefit nature.”
“I think it’s great,” Bandrowicz said. “There’s not a lot of open space in Swampscott, and this is opening up something that people probably didn’t even know about.”
In May, at the Swampscott High School graduation, Cobbett was awarded with the Swampscott Conservancy’s first environmental-focused scholarship, meant for young leaders pursuing studies in environmental and related fields.
Cobbett will attend Purdue University in the fall for biological engineering, focusing on plant-based applications.
“I’m open to anything from genetically modifying plants to survive for example in more desert conditions so that people have more access to iron rich foods, or to actually building out, the robotics side of things, machinery that can solve any sort of environmental factor,” Cabbott told the Swampscott Tides.
