A pollinator garden on 38th Street and Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis, steps from our office, is a garden for all seasons. At the height of the summer, there are blooming coneflowers and black-eyed Susans. Right now the garden is blanketed in white, the coneflowers covered with snow hats. It’s the perfect backdrop for viewing the metal art trellis — of golden bees and dragonflies darting among flowers — created by members of the community with the help of nearby Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center (CAFAC).

This is part of a project incorporating resilient native plantings and pollinator-themed art along the corridor, enhancing the vitality of the cultural district. Since last year, we’ve been working with CAFAC to partner with small businesses in the 38th Street corridor towards this goal. The project is funded by the City of Minneapolis Great Streets program and donations, and fueled by community energy and collaboration.

Neighborhood associations have helped us to shape our approach and identify possible participants. We only moved to Cedar Avenue in 2021 (from nearby Sabathani Community Center), so this has also been a good way to meet neighbors. We have talked to several businesses and created designs for some of them. We’ve removed invasive plant species and added more resilient native perennials through plantings at Everett’s Foods, Cedar Small Engine Repair and Hardshell Fitness, while CAFAC has been creating rain chains, fence decoration and trellises to incorporate into the plantings.

Amazingly, community members helped make the artwork featured in these sculptural elements. CAFAC led pollinator-themed artmaking events at two open houses where people could come to try their hand at metal art work. We all learned to cut, hammer and connect sheets of metal using nuts, bolts and heat to make “artful” bees, butterflies, flowers and other natural elements. By the way, if you look carefully at the sculpture at Cedar Small Engine, you’ll see the remnants of broken-down lawn mowers in juxtaposition with the surrounding native plantings.

Metro Blooms and CAFAC have worked together before, but not on a project right where we both live. “That’s what makes this so exciting,” said Victoria Lauing, CAFAC’s executive director. “Public sculpture with an environmental impact is a real priority for us. It’s wonderful to be doing it here in our own neighborhood.”

For some participants, this project can also be the start of future planning for landscape redesigns that include more sustainable practices like raingardens and permeable pavement. This project doesn’t pay for these major transformations, but we can help participants navigate the grant funding process.

At CAFAC, we created a design that includes collecting rainwater from the roof into a cistern (with chambers shaped like honeycomb) that can provide water for metalworking processes, as well as a rain chain and swale that direct stormwater into a raingarden. CAFAC has received Hennepin County funding for some of the installation work. At Hardshell Fitness, the proposed design turns the parking lot into a nature-filled space, including trees, a raingarden and perennial planters, that is more inviting for outdoor classes and as a community gathering space.

For Rich Harrison, co-director of design at Metro Blooms, nature and art helps to make urban hardscapes more pedestrian-friendly. He sees this project as a conversation starter about sustainability. “Hopefully, these sculptural elements — the bees, butterflies and flowers — will spark conversations about nature and ecology,” Harrison said.

Depending on funding, there is potential to continue this project into 2022, expanding to more participants in the corridor.

— Aleli Balagtas, Metro Blooms Editor