IOANNIS PASHAKIS/Sun-Gazette Top, Lucas Schon, 5, releases a butterfly in the name of his father, Billy Schon, who died earlier this year. Billy Schon helped his stepsister Katy Schon, 13, build a butterfly garden for her Girl Scout Silver Award.

Over 70 butterflies fluttered from the hands of friends and family of a Loyalsock high school student to commemorate the opening of the garden she spent the past year making.

Katy Schon’s parting gift to Loyalsock Middle School, a butterfly garden made up of four sections to resemble a butterfly, was a part of the 13-year-olds Girl Scout Silver Award Project — the highest honor a cadette can earn.

School staff members along with family and friends met with Katy on Saturday to cut the honorary ribbon and officially open the garden, located on the grounds of the middle school. Katy spent over 80 hours to make her project a reality and decided to give it to her alma matter before she moves into the ninth grade.

“It’s a place for science classes,” Matthew Johnson, assistant principal, said of the outdoor garden area within the school. “We will figure out how we can continue to cultivate the garden and what student groups can manage it.”

Katy chose the project, she said, to help the declining monarch butterfly population and after months of digging, designing and planting, Katy and her group of spectators released the new residents into the garden.

“We are hoping they stay here,” Katy said, adding that she enjoyed the process.

The garden was partly designed in order to fit with the rules set out by the Penn State Master Gardener’s Association, which certified the garden before the butterflies were released.. To be given the certification, the association states that a garden must have a water source, an insect house and must contain no plants or sprays, of which Katy made sure.

Katy has been a member of her local Girl Scout troupe for the past 10 years and her mother, the troupe leader, couldn’t be more proud of her daughter’s achievement.

“I’m really proud. She’s done a great job,” Kim Schon, Katy’s mother, said. “This was a project that she’s had a long time coming.”

As Katy worked on the garden over the past year, one of her family members who helped with some of the heavy lifting was her stepbrother Billy Schon. Billy Schon recently passed away, but his son Lucas, 5, released the second monarch into the garden in honor of his father.

“He was helping with the garden before this happened,” Kim Schon said. “It’s sad that he can’t be here to see it.”