Search Results

Searched for: design install
Flowering native plant garden with nature play area and rental complex in background

Brook Gardens Redesign With Community

Residents of affordable housing communities, many of them long-term community members, may care deeply about where they live but not have the ability to influence decisions that impact their home. We partnered with the Brook Gardens community in Brooklyn Park to center resident priorities. Brook Gardens is a townhome/apartment complex that is home to many…

Man holding award

Rich Harrison on Landscape Design, People, Pollinators and Joy

A nonexistent raingarden is how Rich Harrison connected with Metro Blooms. He was the caretaker of the apartment building where he lived, and the yard there was a mess: a couple of trees had been taken down, stormwater was collecting, and nothing was growing. Harrison decided to put in a raingarden. He knew of Metro…

front lawn with clover

Trio Landscaping: Designing Yards for Now and Tomorrow

How do you live in your outdoor space? Do kids play in the yard? Do you like to gather with friends? Are you a gardener? How will all of this change over time? Diana Grundeen of Trio Landscaping asks a lot of questions the first time she meets a potential client. She’s gathering the information…

People planting a large garden

Landscape Redesign: Working With the Community

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…

Walking path in Bunker Hills Regional Park by a site for a pollinator garden

Bunker Hills Regional Park

About This garden design showcases the many diverse ways you can bring native plants into just about any landscape. The photos show the site at the start of the process. Have a look at the design below to see the different plants and how they’re used. For a large area, consider a seeded pollinator meadow.…

Keller Regional Park

About This garden is part of a larger restoration effort around Keller Lake and the nearby Keller Golf Course to bring native plants back to public spaces. Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District, which has worked in these spaces for years, brought together students from American Indian Magnet, Water Stewards, Master Gardeners, and its own staff to…

Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

About The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis features a pollinator meadow. Staff at Eloise Butler created the design and community volunteers, along with the Mississippi River Green Team and Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa, planted the meadow. The matrix style of the meadow includes flowering plants mixed in with…

Battle Creek Regional Park

About The large garden at Battle Creek Regional Park includes a pollinator meadow with two smaller gardens, one at the southeast corner and one on the western edge. Thanks to a partnership with Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District and Saint Paul Public Schools, the meadow was planted by students from L’Etoile Du Nord French Immersion School,…

Who We Are

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

St. Louis Park Neighborhood of Rain Gardens

Since 2018, we have worked with the City of St. Louis Park’s Rainwater Rewards program, which supports residents to take on stormwater management practices in their yards. Our first year, we installed 20 rain gardens in participating residents’ yards, and the program has grown since. This work is part of our Neighborhood of Rain Gardens…

Back of two people on bench in a small park with gardens

Riverside Plaza Community Green Spaces

Metro Blooms has been working with the Riverside Plaza community since 2018 to redesign outdoor spaces for greater environmental resilience and better quality of outdoor living. Through our partnership, we created beautiful community green spaces that manage stormwater sustainably and provide habitat for pollinators. We worked with the Riverside Plaza Tenant Association (RPTA) and owner…

People on side of garden watching another person planting a plant

Northeast Minneapolis Commercial Corridor

Small business properties in cities often don’t have space for flowers or trees, and have lots of impermeable concrete outdoor areas. But our design team identified many opportunities to improve water quality and create habitat for pollinators. We partnered with local businesses and organizations in Northeast Minneapolis to install clean water and native habitat projects…

Our Work

Metro Blooms provides resources to help people care for land and water. This often includes support to install rain gardens that filter and clean water or native plantings that provide habitat for pollinators. Partnership and relationships are central to how we work. We partner with community groups, nonprofits, local government, business owners and individuals, from…

Three men after planting in a large community garden

Creating Sustainable Green Space With Community

When Hawo Abdi saw a flier about a tree-planting event in the elevator at her apartment building, she immediately took a picture and sent it around to other friends with children urging them to attend. The event would teach youth about how to plant trees, take better care of the earth, and give their time…

headshot man in suit and tie

John Kinara Appointed New Chair of Metro Blooms Board

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Metro Blooms is pleased to announce that John Kinara has been appointed Chair of the Board of Directors of Metro Blooms. Kinara, formerly Vice-Chair, takes on the leadership role from Carol Kuechler, who will continue to serve as a Board member. “This is a very proud moment for me, stepping into the…

Who We Are

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.

Brooklyn Park residents helping install the Brooklyn Park Small Business Center plantings.

Bringing Beauty to the Brooklyn Park Small Business Center

Drive along Brooklyn Boulevard in Brooklyn Park, and you’ll pass a typical sprawling parking lot for a shopping center. But look a little closer, and you’ll see something different about the green strip bordering the road. Amidst the typical turfgrass, cheerful clumps of native grasses and flowers beckon visitors, plantings arranged in gently curving beds…

Home

Our 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. Learn more. Donate

sculptural wall planter with new plants

38th Street: Goodridge Building Green Wall

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…

red planter with native flowers near red pergola

38th Street: Plants at Mama Sheila’s House of Soul

Earlier in the fall, passers-by might have noticed some bright-red planters, with late-season blooms spilling out, at the entrance to Mama Sheila’s House of Soul in Minneapolis. They matched perfectly with the outdoor tables and pergola. It was almost as if it had been planned that way all along. But it was something new. In…

art sculpture in small garden in front of building winter

38th Street: Art, Native Plants and Pollinators

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…

“Raingarden Refresh” for Neighborhood of Raingardens 2021

Last summer was the first time we did a Neighborhood of Raingardens program in one community with a major focus on maintenance. The Sheridan Neighborhood Association in Minneapolis wanted to provide previous participants with guidance on caring for their raingardens. So we offered a “raingarden refresh” program. During a one-and-a-half-hour visit, we checked a participant’s…

Brook Gardens

We started working with the Brook Gardens community in 2019. Community members were co-creators in this project to create more resilient and livable outdoor spaces. Residents set priorities for the…  Read More

Our Roots, Our Work

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…