Boy Scout Nico Dellacroce celebrated his 16th birthday Saturday by helping build a garden for Foothills Elementary School.

The garden project is designed to help teach children about science and provide a community resource. The first plants should hit the ground this spring.

“It’s going good,” said Dellacroce, who helped line up volunteers as a project that will help him earn the prestigious rank of Eagle Scout. “We got almost two times the amount of volunteers we expected, so it’s going fast.”

The garden has been in the works for about a year and a half, led by Hillary Dickman, with the school’s Parent Teacher Organization.

“I wanted kids in our school district to have exposure to fresh food and healthy food, since they don’t always have the opportunity at home or at school,” said Dickman, mother to girls in 2nd and 4th grade at the school.

Each grade level in the school will have its own plot to work, and they’ll keep the same one throughout their time at Foothills. Some of the school’s neighbors have already jumped on the opportunity to rent plots to do their own gardening, and Dickman said there will be special therapy gardening beds for the school’s autistic students.

Volunteers worked through a snowy day March 9 and a chilly morning Saturday crafting wooden frames for garden beds at Dellacroce’s direction.

Dickman needed someone to round up volunteers for the work days and oversee the work, and that’s where Dellacroce came in. He found out about the project through a fellow Scout.

“He’s done a super job of organizing everything,” said Paige Kraus, a first grade teacher who’s the faculty sponsor for the school’s garden club. “It’s a huge project to undertake, and he’s done a fabulous job.”

Saturday was the second and last project work day. Dellacroce is looking for donated gardening tools for the kids to use at school. He’s also got to present his project and write about what he did, but at least the organizing is over.

“It feels very good, it’s a big weight on your shoulders and pretty stressful,” Dellacroce said. “It’s a pretty big relief.”

Dellacroce’s dad, Paul, said his son has been a Boy Scout since he was 11, including in Asia and Europe when his family lived on military bases.

“It was very nice to see his confidence level rise as this project went on,” Paul Dellacroce said.

Nico Dellacroce said only about two out of every hundred Scouts makes it all the way to finish as an Eagle, and he’s proud to have made it this far.

“Eagle Scouts is just a big honor, it’ll get you a lot of places in life,” he said. “It’s a big honor to be part of that 2 percent.”