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At just 2 years old, Clyde Wilder Houle Bareford can already identify milkweed and goldenrod when helping his mother collect seeds for use in her most recent public art endeavor.

In fact, Merrimac artist and environmentalist Jenn Houle credits her young son with a significant role in motivating her to develop and execute the traveling art project she started earlier this year, “Plant Paint Cross-Pollinate.”

The project’s goal is to create a butterfly exhibit that “migrates” through communities using the transformative power of the arts to emphasize eco-friendly landscaping and gardening practices.

“We’re in an environmental crisis,” Houle says, stressing that opting to plant native species is “an easy, low-cost way to create habitat and make a difference.”

Houle strove to create something that spans multiple communities. Currently, her project is on display at select sites in Haverhill, including Bradford Common, Winnekenni Park, Plug Pond, Tattersall Farm, Whittier Birthplace and public school grounds, along with the Northern Essex Community College campuses in Haverhill and Lawrence.

“The environmental crisis is something that we need to work on across county, state and country lines,” she says.

Digging in

The project kicked off with a series of “Plant and Paint” workshops in January and February. Participants from Amesbury, Groveland, Haverhill, Lawrence, Merrimac, Newbury and West Newbury were invited to add their own creative touches to 15 large-scale aluminum composite cutouts representing the five lepidopterous families (also known as butterflies and moths) native to Massachusetts — swallowtails, whites and sulphurs, gossamer-wings, skippers, and brush-footed butterflies.

“The 15 butterfly murals are a community of voices coming together to celebrate planting native — a simple, yet powerful contribution each individual can make to help restore our ecosystem,” Houle says.

At the start of each workshop, she gave a presentation to emphasize why so many gardeners are now incorporating native plants into their backyard.

Houle takes her inspiration from entomologist Doug Tallamay’s “Homegrown National Park” project, along with her experience viewing cave paintings in France, where the voices of prehistoric artists spoke of the connection of interspecies communities — a richness she strives to achieve in her own work.

“It’s important that many voices come together to speak as one in dialogue about the issue of native plants rather than the work being a monologue from one artist’s perspective,” she says.

The non-native species and cultivars invading backyards, parks, schools and government buildings have little to no nectar or pollen, and therefore can’t support the fat-rich caterpillars that 96% of songbirds feed to their nestlings, explains Carol Decker, a West Newbury resident and the former longtime director of Mass Audubon’s Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary in Topsfield.

“Birdseed is great — but for a baby bird, it doesn’t cut it — they need caterpillars,” Decker says.

Houle and Decker are members of West Newbury Wild and Native, or WN2, a local group committed to restoring healthy ecosystems “one yard at a time.”

After offering a few tips on painting, Houle turned workshop participants loose, letting their imaginations guide them as they used acrylics to depict a variety of native plants on the butterfly canvases. Houle also painted five butterflies, focusing on the plants that the insects feed on and nest in as they transition through the stages of metamorphosis.

Those who attended planted pollinator-friendly species in pots to start — or expand — their own eco-sensitive backyard gardens. Gathered by Clyde and his mom, members of WN2 and local garden clubs, seed choices included milkweed, coneflower, bee balm, goldenrod and aster.

Spreading the word

Starting this summer and continuing through the end of October, the “Butterfly Mural Migration” has been fluttering around the communities, landing in local open spaces, libraries and schools, raising awareness about native plantings and pollinators as it inspires care for local habitats.

“My hope is to evolve, repeat and expand the project annually, and for participants to save and share seeds to spread plants — so the message grows in multiple ways,” Houle says. “Cross-pollination is starting to happen at each ‘Plant and Paint’ — conversations around ways to bring together visual art projects and native garden planting. It’s very exciting.”

Using her artistic talents to inspire positive change isn’t a new concept for Houle. An adjunct instructor at Fitchburg State University and Northern Essex Community College, the Newton, New Hampshire, native’s childhood experiences camping and hiking fostered her love and care for the environment. A painter at heart, Houle earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art in 2007 and a Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University in 2015.

She and husband, Stevie Bareford, a brewer and illustrator she met in art school, even gave out milkweed seeds to guests at their 2017 wedding.

They started their own native plant garden shortly after buying their home in Merrimac in 2020 and installed a colorful pollinator mural on one wall of the family-owned BareWolf Brewing in Amesbury during the pandemic lockdown.

Houle is also collaborating with the nonprofit Pentucket Arts Foundation to create a similarly dramatic and educational mural on an exterior wall at Dr. Frederick N. Sweetsir Elementary School in Merrimac. The project is phase three of the foundation’s “Natural Restorations: A Tri-Town, Tri-Mural Public Art Exhibit.”

Following Clyde’s birth, concerns over the growing impacts of climate change — such as habitat loss and species extinction — propelled the artist to take a more public approach to her advocacy. Houle and Bareford are committed to raising Clyde in as eco-friendly an environment as possible.

“Everybody doing a little will make a huge difference,” Houle says.

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