Brand new and boring: Stockbridge Junior/Senior High School needed a makeover.

“Everybody said that our school has no color and it looks like a jail,” senior Delaney Lauckner said. “I wanted to help make it more beautiful.”

Donated by Gee Farms to plant, Lauckner has been working on a project that will help beautify the outside plaza.

All of the research and budgeting for the project was done by Lauckner.

The idea of the school beautification sparked when her leadership class started talking about ways to improve the school overall.

Corey Baird, leadership teacher, said, “Delaney has always wanted to be an active part in making our school a better place, mentally and physically.”

There is more to this project than just making the school more beautiful.

“At my mom’s work, I learned about all the issues with pollinators and that made me want to do something about it,” Delaney said.

She found out that there is an 80 to 100 square mile section around the Stockbridge and Lansing area that have no food for pollinators, which are animals that pollinate different kinds of plants, such as bees and monarch butterflies.

To help with this issue, Lauckner planted only pollinating flowers, such as butterfly weed.

With the help of an assembly crew, she planted a variety of beautiful flowers and plants that helped brighten up the school.

“The school looked really bland and plain, so I figured I would do as much as I could do to help brighten it up,” senior Tori Shepard, a volunteer on the beautification crew, said.