DAPHNE — Even as a young girl, Lexi Guillory loved nature.

Her fascination grew with time, thanks in part to a special teacher and the ecology courses she taught at Daphne Middle School.

Today, Guillory’s love of nature has come full circle.

As part of her work to achieve a Girl Scout Gold Award, Guillory has once again teamed up with her mentor, Dr. Jeanne Fox.

But instead of working in a classroom, Guillory, a Daphne High School junior, has spent the past few months, with the help of her family, working outside. That’s where she designed and executed a plan to refurbish DMS’s butterfly garden and some trails leading into a wetland area on school property.

The fruits of her labor — an estimated 70 hours of hands-on work — were on display Friday, when DMS celebrated Earth Day 2007.

In addition to various student activities, Guillory was on hand to explain her work and help youngsters get a better idea of why it’s important to take care of the environment.

Guillory, 17, who is completing work on the highest honor a senior Girl Scout can achieve, first got active 11 years ago when she was in first grade, she said.

She is slated to receive this honor May 3 in Mobile.

Seeing the younger children enjoy the revamped butterfly garden and trails made all of her hard work worthwhile, Guillory said.

“We had to remove about 3 to 4 feet of overgrowth from the butterfly garden, because of the plants here having died,” she said.

“Some of the lantana came back, but we did have to transplant some swamp iris after we weeded and weeded and weeded some more,” Guillory said with a chuckle.

Stones were replaced in the outline of a butterfly and other plants — elephant’s ear and milkweed — were also added as part of her project.

Planning the work began last November, while work in the wetlands got under way in February, she said.

Overhead growth and debris left from storms were cleared from the wetlands and trails.

Maintaining the wetlands is important since they “serve as a great nursery and filter system for the environment,” Guillory said.

Volunteers who helped included some friends as well as her parents Hollie and Sean Guillory and younger brother, Alex, she said.

“It has just been amazing to be a part of all this work and then to see how it has come out,” Guillory said.

In addition to her work, environmental-learning projects highlighted the students’ day, including collecting plankton from the naturally occurring wetlands and making water cycle bracelets, Fox said.

At the time the butterfly garden was built, Fox was a teacher at the school and responsible for writing the grants to fund this project, she said.

Fox said the school’s back campus includes about eight acres of wetlands, complete with a 100-foot-long boardwalk and observation area

“The purpose of having them get down to the wetlands level was so that the students will understand that there are living organisms in there — and in water in general — whether they think it is dirty or not,” Fox said.

Three different colored beads — blue, green and purple — were used to create water cycle bracelets, she said.

Each bead color had a different meaning, each color representing evaporation, condensation and precipitation, Fox said.

“This gives them a reminder of what they’ve learned about the water cycle and also a nice little reminder of Earth Day 2007,” she said.

Students also learned orienteering — or the proper way to read a compass — as part of the activities, Fox said.

Helping guide Guillory through her Girl Scout project has been a bit of deja vu, according to Fox.

That’s because she can still vividly remember when her ecology students helped build both the butterfly garden and trails.

After Fox left DMS for a couple of years for another area school, the garden fell into some disarray, she said.

That was the perfect time to team up with her former student, Fox said.

“Lexi was looking for a project to do for her Gold Star award and this just seemed a natural,” she said. “Because when she was in my ecology class, she loved it and was so good that she could have taught it herself,” Fox said.

Dozens of hours later, Guillory has once again proven herself by rising to the challenge, she said.

“She took this all on, cleaned things up and it looks really fabulous,” Fox said with a proud smile.

“There was a lot of hard work here and what she has accomplished really shows — especially in the butterfly garden,” she said.

“Lexi really made a difference for our students and we won’t forget what she’s done here.”

Sixth-grader Olivia Whitfield said she appreciates Guillory’s efforts.

“It’s important to take care of nature and the Earth, because everything we do, good or bad, makes a difference,” Whitfield said.

“What’s going to happen to our world if we don’t stop polluting it? Really, every day should be Earth Day.”