What a delightful time to visit Tara in her Butterfly Fields at Rattles Garden!
A few years back, Tara began cultivating milkweed, and her commitment quickly blossomed. This past spring, she successfully grew several thousand native milkweed plants, distributing them throughout central Arkansas.
The Butterfly Fields project expanded significantly when Tara and her husband acquired 75 acres adjacent to their farm in Vilonia, dedicated to conserving butterfly and wildlife habitats. Over the past two years, she has been photographing and documenting butterflies, tracking their arrival times and the plants they feed on. During the fall and winter, she collects seeds from native plants on the property and has been experimenting with various cold stratification techniques for seeds of plants she hasn’t yet established.
One of her objectives is to produce high-quality native plant plugs available from their farm in central Arkansas. In the spring she offers between 20 and 30 mostly native plants that are excellent nectar sources for butterflies, along with a few larval host plants for butterflies to lay their eggs on.
Some recent butterfly species on the farm include Eastern Tailed-Blues, Diana Fritillary, Luna Moths, Spicebush Swallowtail, Tiger Swallowtail, and Eastern Black Swallowtail.
If you’ve ever purchased vegetables, fruits, flowers, or plants from Rattles Garden, you know how fantastic, intelligent, and dedicated Tara is. We are incredibly fortunate to have her researching and documenting rare butterflies in our area, making her the go-to expert on butterflies in Central Arkansas. I’m thrilled to see how her project develops in the years ahead!