Plant Paint Cross-Pollinate

• Learn about native plants' magic power to save pollinators & the planet!
• Paint a 18x24” butterfly sign for your yard!
• Receive native seeds for your own garden.
• Discuss & inspire easy actions to heal the earth.
• Add a flower to community painted signs for the 2025 Butterfly Mural Migration touring Merrimack Valley.

Local public artist Jenn Houle will teach painting and winter sowing planting skills in this workshop. The event will begin with a lecture "From Lawns to Vibrant, Living Landscapes" by guest speaker Carol Decker.

Learn about the magic of native plants to help restore our ecosystem with a talk by Carol and project intro/painting demo by Jenn. Signs will be painted in the indoor classroom. Workshop is geared towards teens and adults, all art experience levels! Children may attend with supervision. Artist grade mural paint is used.

Since the return of soldiers following World War II, Americans have been fixated by lawns and their cultural status. These ecological dead zones now cover over 40 million acres throughout the United States. Our misunderstanding and captivation with lawns and ornamental plants have helped lead us to our current biodiversity crisis. Carol Decker, naturalist and founding member of West Newbury’s Wild and Native will explore the history of lawns and how we can all be part of the solution by re-wilding with native plants all or a section of our yards. Native plants do not need fertilizers, require far less water than ornamentals and planting them is a win-win for you and for nature.

1. two clean 4" planting pots (if you have them)
2. a piece of cardboard/drop cloth to lay your wet paint sign onto in your vehicle
3. smock to protect your clothes
4. Optional donations of: used good condition 18x24" corrugated plastic yard signs to be turned into future butterfly signs! Extra clean 4" planting pots to donate.

‘Plant Paint Cross-Pollinate’ (PPC) is a public art mural project led by artist Jenn Houle that cultivates ‘botanical belonging’, decolonizes public and private land, and restores ecosystem health with native plants. Through community art and nature workshops, PPCPinspires a cultural shift from echoes of colonization, lawns & imported plants, towards restorative land use: interspecies habitat for seasonal cycles in a shifting climate.
At Plant and Paint & Seed Stories workshops in Oct 2024 - Jan 2025, participants will paint Butterfly Mural signs then plant and keep the seeds of native pollinator-friendly species and share ‘Seed Stories’ personal connections to place & plants. The community will create 200 Butterfly Mural signs to display in their yards or join the upcoming 2025 summer Butterfly Mural migration, and Seed Story packets of native seeds will be distributed at partner sites including conservation land, public libraries and schools.

Special thanks to Collective Futures Fund Ongoing Platforms Grant, a regranting program hosted by Tufts University Art Galleries

Workshop Instructor Bios

Carol Decker is the past Director of Mass Audubon’s Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary where she worked for 29 years to manage and oversee conservation and education initiatives at the nine North Shore sanctuaries. She is a founding member of West Newbury Wild and Native, a group composed of people dedicated to sharing information and resources for residents of West Newbury and surrounding Towns to integrate native plants into their yards, support pollinators and work to eradicate invasive species. Carol’s yard has quickly become a native plant nursery as she works to grow and distribute natives for planting throughout the town.

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Jenn Houle is a public artist and native New Englander. Two decades of teaching art, endless naturalist curiosity, a deep concern for all living beings, and motherhood shapes her artistic practice. Jenn is a current Great Marsh Artist at Manship Artist Residency, and has created a ‘Dark Skies’ collaborative glow-in-the-dark mural and public program at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.

Other art residencies include the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (twice, once evacuated during fire storms then returned to lead synchronous fireflies programming), Vermont Studio Center and is a 2024 ChangeMaker with Essex County Community Foundation. Ms. Houle is a grant recipient from the Collective Futures Fund, Puffin Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Essex County Community Foundation and Cornell Council for the Arts. A painter at heart, she received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and later an MFA from Cornell University. She currently teaches at Fitchburg State University and Northern Essex Community College. Learn more www.jennhoule.com.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Parker River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center, 6 Plum Island Turnpike, Newburyport, United States