Saddened by the demise of the butterfly garden at Purple Sage Elementary School in Northwest Austin, Girl Scout Troop 2062 set out to revive the garden and bring back the butterflies.

"We wanted to make the Purple Sage garden look better because it had a lot of dead plants," said scout Aida Dance, a Purple Sage fourth-grader. "It was supposed to have purple flowers."

The girls wrote letters to Home Depot asking the company if it would be willing to donate the plants and supplies to help them revitalize the garden, which is in the Anderson Mill neighborhood. Aida's father works for the company, and he dropped off the letters. This spring, they learned Home Depot had decided to donate all the supplies for the garden, amounting to about $1,000 in donations.

Girl Scout Delilah Thornburg, also a Purple Sage fourth-grader, said the girls took some of the plants home to take care of the plants that had not yet died.

The Girl Scouts, several employees from Home Depot and community members replanted the garden July 22.

The girls will be able to use the garden to learn about drought-resistant plants and water conservation, Troop 2062 Leader Stephanie Thornburg said. In addition, the whole community will be able to enjoy the garden, she said.

The garden consists of several fruit trees, including limes, apples and pomegranate. Aida said that when the trees produce fruit, the troop would like to donate them to the school to use to make school lunches healthier.

Joyce McKean, who works in the garden center at the Four Points Home Depot, picked out all the plants—including crape myrtle, passion vine, parsley, dill and eventually milkweed—to attract a variety of butterfly species such as Monarchs, gulf fritillary, pipevine swallowtails and black swallowtails.