Mission Metro Blooms partners with communities to create resilient landscapes and foster clean watersheds, embracing the values of equity and inclusion to solve environmental challenges. Vision Engage communities to create resilient landscapes. Values Ecological health; environmental justice; education; inspiration; community engagement; and partnership
Mission Metro Blooms partners with communities to create resilient landscapes and foster clean watersheds, embracing the values of equity and inclusion to solve environmental challenges.
During the six years that Becca Cerra has had a studio at Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center (CAFAC), she never noticed the Goodridge Building, one of CAFAC’s neighbors at George Floyd Square. With a non-descript brick front, it looked like just another quiet office space among a string of local businesses that make up the…
Metro Blooms grew out of a volunteer-powered garden recognition program, the Minneapolis Garden Awards program, which was first established by the City of Minneapolis’ Committee on the Urban Environment (CUE). Between 1979 and 2016, hundreds of trained volunteer evaluators visited thousands of gardens, every year recognizing and celebrating excellence, and inspiring a proud culture of…
Inviting a community’s residents to be part of redesigning their landscape helps to create outdoor space more responsive to their needs and increases the likelihood of their stewardship of the space. Currently Metro Blooms is on this journey with tenants at Brook Gardens, a rental community in Brooklyn Park where we recently finished our first…
Our Neighborhood of Raingardens program began in 2009 to support large-scale community participation in the installation of raingardens and to build awareness of raingardens and other actions you can take in your landscape to protect clean water in our environment. Typically, these projects are a cost share between a neighborhood organization and property owners. Participants attend…
Mission Metro Blooms partners with communities to create resilient landscapes and foster clean watersheds, embracing the values of equity and inclusion to solve environmental challenges.
One of our longest-running programs, Neighborhood of Raingardens, turns 10 this year. Over the past decade, we’ve been installing raingardens in people’s yards, neighborhood by neighborhood, while teaching residents about landscaping practices that can help reduce stormwater runoff, a major cause of water pollution. Our goal is to help people make their property and community…
(Photo courtesy of the City of St. Louis Park) “I am a raingarden” signs have sprouted like wildflowers in some St. Louis Park neighborhoods this summer. They are located in… Read More →
As we approach monarch conservation from all angles, we rely on partners who work in different arenas, with different, yet related, expertise. Focusing on restoration of native plants in… Read More →
As I began thinking about a summary of our year at Metro Blooms, I started thinking about what excites me the most about my job. At Metro Blooms, we couple… Read More →
Metro Blooms and Blue Thumb are Merging! The following describes the current understanding of how the Blue Thumb program would be governed and would operate following a merger of the… Read More →
Wow. I know I said last year was busy, but 2014 was so busy we hardly had time to blog about, well, anything. Over the last 12 months we’ve worked… Read More →
Bob Wolk joined Metro Blooms’ team of volunteers in 2008. As someone who likes to constantly reinvent himself, he’s taken on many different roles to support Metro Blooms over the… Read More →
Barb Gasterland is one of our longtime volunteers. She started out as a garden evaluator in 2005, when her interest in a raingarden movement happening at the time led her… Read More →
For our first Volunteer Spotlight, we have Mark Pedelty, a University of Minnesota professor whose involvement with Metro Blooms stems from some really interesting experiences. You might ask why a… Read More →
As 2013 winds to an end, we find ourselves spending a lot of time planning for NEXT year. At Metro Blooms we’re writing work plans for 2014, anxiously awaiting the… Read More →
Throughout the summer and fall of 2013, Metro Blooms has been working hard with the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa to install raingardens in five different neighborhoods in Minneapolis.… Read More →
To kick off a new year of staff, board and volunteer biographies (that’s right volunteers, I’m coming for you next) I interviewed Bryan Pynn, Metro Blooms’ director of design and… Read More →
Metro Blooms’ biography for the month of November (I know it’s really December, but only by three days!) is highlighting our executive director, Becky Rice. Becky may be the only… Read More →
As mid-May surprises us with it’s vigor and business, so does the Spring weeds! Here’s some tips and pics for starting the year in control of the gardener’s ancient nemesis. Watch for… Read More →
Here in the office we’ve been analyzing Raingarden Workshop surveys from years gone past, pulling out trends and interesting snippets that can point us to a better awareness of our… Read More →
All of us here at Metro Blooms are excited for our 2012 projects… we have dozens! 😀There are two however that we’d like to describe more in depth: Urban Homeworks… Read More →
