Arkansas Master Naturalists

NCAMN's garden teams work in the following locations—

Gaston Wildflower Meadow at Bull Shoals-White River State Park near Lakeview,

Heritage Herb Gardens of Ozark Folk Center State Park in Mountain View,

Tyler Bend Visitor Center and Buffalo River Ranger Station on the Buffalo National River,

Calico Rock Pollinator Gardens in a parking lot in old town Calico Rock, and

Flippin Wildlife Meadow in the air approach to the Marion County Airport.

NCAMN maintains the three-acre Gaston Wildflower Meadow and Trail by planting, seeding and nurturing native varieties in the meadow and in the beds around the pergolas while working to eliminate invasive and non-native plants. The team works March through November.

Contact: Paula Caprio or Barb Tietmeyer. 
Email: ncamn.contact@gmail.com: 

To read more about the activities of the GWFM volunteers, check this out! 2023 NCAMN GWFM Team Annual Report

Volunteers assist the Ozark Folk Center gardening staff in maintaining and planting the park’s Heritage Gardens. The gardens include native woodland plants, as well as vegetables, fruit, herbs, and flowers cultivated for hundreds of years in the Ozarks.

While working in gardens and greenhouse, volunteers learn about traditional culinary and medicinal uses of many plants and techniques for cultivating and propagating them.

There are usually three work mornings each month throughout the year: first and third Wednesdays and first Fridays.

To read more about our volunteer work at OFC, view our annual report: 
2024 NCAMN Ozark Folk Center Team Annual Report

Contact: Donna Brocka.
Email: .ncamn.contact@gmail.com 

Buffalo National River Volunteers maintain the beds at the entrance to the Tyler Bend Visitors Center and the Buffalo Point Ranger Station from April until October. Team members meet at the Tyler Bend Visitors Center on the 2nd Friday of the month. Each workday volunteers are encouraged to bring native plants from their own gardens for our "native plant swap". We work that morning, enjoy a picnic lunch and then caravan to Buffalo Point to tidy the beds there. On additional workdays, scheduled as needed, we assist the park personnel with other projects such as invasive species removal and historic cemetery clean up. 

To learn more about the work we do, please click this link to download our annual report:
2023 NCAMN Buffalo National River Volunteers

Contact: Marilyn Fouts or Dwan Garrison. 
Email: ncamn.contact@gmail.com 

Pollinator plants and flowers started to show true colors and pizzazz this year, in the third year of existence of the gardens on Rodman Avenue in Old Calico Rock. We have a variety of pollinator plants that produced nectar and pollen throughout the summer. and brought in bees, butterflies, and other bugs.

This has been an exciting year in the gardens, we added many new milkweeds, yarrows, rattlesnake masters, sunflowers, and other pollinator species. The plants were donated and seed saving is going on this fall so we will have plenty of plants to share with interested visitors.

We are currently working on signs for the garden to provide butterfly education as well as the importance of pollinators.

We are also expanding to a new garden area at the Calico Rock Food Pantry where pollinator plants and seeds from the Rodman site will be maintained and provide information to a different audience.

For more information about this team, take a look at the most recent annual report: 
2024 NCAMN Calico Rock Pollinator Gardens

Contact: Jill Easton
Email: ncamn.contact@gmail.com

This project arose in early 2023—a joint effort with Flippin Airport Board and, in initial stages, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC). A pollinator meadow that will beautify the air approach to the airport, reduce maintenance costs, and, most importantly to NCAMN, provide habitat for butterflies, bees, and other pollinators.

In 2022, the FAA contacted Marion County Regional Airport in Flippin to improve the clear zone to approach the runway. This required bulldozing the field across from the highway of all trees that might obstruct incoming air traffic. In March 2023, a bulldozer moved in and cleared all vegetation. It was a sad, naked hill. NCAMN and AGFC representatives met with the Airport Board and offered to plant and maintain a pollinator meadow. The airport board agreed, and the Flippin Wildlife Meadow was born.

Creating a pollinator meadow is not a quick or simple process. The vegetation included many invasives: Bradford pear, sericea lespedeza, horseweed, and Japanese honeysuckle. We combat these with herbicides and controlled burns.

Photos show the initial burn in summer 2023, extracting soil for testing, and more recent efforts to spray and otherwise remove invasive species.

A pollinator mix formulated especially for the Ozarks was sown in the spring of 2024 and has helped to turn the meadow into an ever changing artist's palette of yellow, white, and pink blossoms.

The Flippin Wildlife Meadow team continually monitors and combats encroaching invasives.

Contact: Dwan Garrison and Susan McNutt

Email: ncamn.contact@gmail.com