By: Hailey Middleton
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (UATV) — The True Colors Farm by PerspectAbility is Northwest Arkansas’s first You-Pick Tulip farm. Over the weekend PerspectAbility hosted a soft opening with several varieties of tulips available for purchase.
The non-profit organization charges a $5 entry fee and $2 per stem for any prospective community members.
Before the opening of the farm, families are able to pay an entry fee and conduct a family photoshoot before all the tulips are harvested.
The Farm was planted in october of 2020 by a large group of volunteers, and consists of 58,000 tulip bulbs.
The non-profit was founded by a group of moms with Neurodiverse children, who all have the common goal of being able to support their kids’ futures.
Their mission for the farm is as follows, “ After researching local resources for adults with neurodiversities, we determined the options available don’t fit our children’s needs or offer the quality of life we desire for our children. We are advocates for our children and firm believers in research-based strategies, data collection, communication, and accountability to ensure programming is effective and appropriate for the individual receiving it.”
With the hope of one day having their children be a part of neurodiverse living communities in Arkansas.
Celeste explained that their definition of inclusion is not having an assisted living community of just neurologically diverse residents, and the rest of society on the outside looking in; But to have a neurologically diverse community member as your neighbor.
“It takes more than awareness, awareness that there are people that are different than us is not enough, that’s not enough depth of knowledge” Celeste said.
The Tulip farm has neurodiverse employees and hopes to hire more people with neurological diversities. As this will help teach them real world socialization skills.
True colors farm opens this Thursday April 15th until the tulips are gone, and hopes to grow and sell pumpkins in the fall.