The focus of the Rockefeller Institute’s environmental programs is using our grounds and facilities to provide a variety of educational programming in horticulture, landscaping and environmental education.
Our setting and proximity to several natural areas, coupled with the wealth of resources and expertise available from the University of Arkansas System, enables us to offer unique programs that promote and celebrate the natural heritage of our “Natural State.”
The overall goal of our environmental programs is to provide workshops and seminars that promote practices of good stewardship of our lands and natural resources. The programs are aimed at transmitting knowledge and skills to individuals, demonstrating appropriate practices, and helping develop models for the protection and conservation of Arkansas’ ecological systems.
Click on a program or scroll down for more information:
AmeriCorps
AmeriCorps is a federally funded national service program that engages Americans of all ages and backgrounds in service to address the most critical problems in our nation’s communities.
The Rockefeller Institute AmeriCorps program has an environmental focus. This allows us to combine our environmental education efforts with our outreach mission. Our members participate in local community clean-ups, landscaping projects, recycling efforts and other general environmental awareness events.
Cultivate Your Wild Side
A Series of Environmental Workshops
Cultivate Your Wild Side is the theme of our environmental workshop series. Workshops on heritage gardening, quail and songbird habitat, low maintenance gardening, and landscape construction are typical offerings.
Click here for more information on our upcoming Arkansas Native Plant ID workshop. To download a flyer about this event, click here.
Given the natural and historical setting of the Rockefeller Institute, we are intertwining our environmental programming with our heritage programming by creating a demonstration farm called “The Heritage Farmstead.”
The Heritage Farmstead is being developed to preserve knowledge of the close-knit agrarian society of small, self-sufficient farms Gov. Rockefeller found when he first arrived on Petit Jean Mountain in 1953.
Petit Jean Mountain Audubon Chapter
The Rockefeller Institute helped establish a new chapter of Audubon. This has grown quickly and will bring increasing amounts of Audubon programming and activities to the five counties surrounding Petit Jean Mountain.
Meetings are held at 7 p.m. on the fourth Monday of each month, rotating among Lake Dardanelle State Park in Russellville, the Rockefeller Institute, University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton and Faulkner County Library in Conway.
Collaboration is important to us as the programs at the Rockefeller Institute are designed to complement efforts by other organizations in the state. We value input from the public and partnerships with other organizations and institutions. If you have ideas for environmental education programs you would like to see offered or would like to partner with us to offer a specific environmental education program, please e-mail us.
