The Wareham Garden Club gave a $2,000 scholarship to 2022 Wareham High School graduate Adrienne Padden at its annual meeting on Thursday, June 8. 

The scholarship goes to Wareham natives who study or plan to study plant sciences in college. 

This fall, Padden will start her sophomore year at the University of Vermont, where she studies agroecology and landscape design with a minor in green building and community planning. She hopes to help create green spaces in urban communities. 

Padden was her class valedictorian at Wareham High School. While there, she sold almost 200 tree saplings to her community, partnering with Tree-Plenish. Tree-Plenish is a nonprofit, founded by high school students in Mansfield, Massachusetts, that encourages students to plant the same number of trees that their schools use in paper each year.