Eatontown 8th Grade Girl Scout Cleans Up Community Garden

EATONTOWN, NJ — For her Girl Scouts Silver Award project, this Eatontown eighth grader decided to clean up a community garden in town.

Madison Theobald, 13 and a student at Memorial Middle School, chose to clean up the community garden at 151 Grant Avenue in Eatontown. This is a community garden where residents volunteer to maintain their individual plots.

The garden had not been cleaned since the summer of 2024 because its longtime caretaker, Phil Nuttal, became ill. Nuttal died recently of terminal cancer.

Madison chose to clean up the garden because she first noticed a bench in the garden was broken.

It was a lot of work! Madison had to pull up all the weeds, which took her hours to do, and she had to wheel in 24 wheel barrels' full worth of mulch. Not only that, but Madison raised all the money herself to restore the park bench. She built a brand-new bench from scratch; she cut the wood, screwed it together and sanded and stained it.

As her project continued, she researched the history of the Grant Avenue garden and discovered Nuttal had started the garden, plus a butterfly garden, with his wife, Diane.

Madison also learned that Nuttal lived right down the street from her and she was very sad to hear that he died of cancer in August.

She decided to dedicate the new garden bench in Nuttal's memory. Madison placed a plaque bearing Nuttal's name on the new bench, and both were unveiled this past Saturday, Oct. 11 at a ribbon cutting with Eatontown Mayor Anthony Talerico and fellow Girl Scouts.

The new bench is called "Sit with me and forget the world."

Madison said it was very hard work restoring the garden, but she never gave up.

"I feel proud of myself for my vision that became a reality," she said.