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…
I developed a passion for ecology and restoration work in college. The first time I walked in an expanse of prairie changed how I saw the world around me. I… Read More →
(photo: Garden nurtured by board members Randy and Bridget Rau) On the Community of Gardeners I have been working with plants and learning about plants for 25-plus years. I love… Read More →
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.
We are planting “seeds” for future pollinator gardens within our communities. Working with the nonprofit Wilderness in the City, we’re installing six pollinator-friendly demonstration gardens in parks across the Twin Cities. We hope to inspire park visitors to take home ideas for incorporating native plants into their outdoor spaces. Each garden features all Minnesota-native plants…
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…
Help Metro Blooms unlock $10,000! Thanks to generous donors, we have the opportunity to unlock $10,000 in the Earth Month Challenge Fund to support community projects. Help us make this happen. Your gift of $250 (or more) unlocks a $250 gift from the fund. Only through April 30 Donate
The work to protect Minnesota’s lakes and rivers, to support pollinators, and to create resilient landscapes in all of our communities starts with each of us. We are planting the seeds for a more sustainable future. Thank you for supporting our work with a gift.
Whether you are looking to hire an organization to support equitable engagement or you are seeking resources to begin or expand this work on your own, here are some resources and organizations we are learning from and want to share.
The green economy is growing, providing well-paying jobs and education opportunities to people interested in beautifying and protecting the environment. Below you’ll find a variety of career and learning resources, many of them for youth and young adults, to help you get started researching opportunities.
Over the years Metro Blooms has benefited from numerous public and private grants. Our knowledge is not comprehensive, but we’re happy to share what we know with others doing community work. In particular we’ve had success with local government grants for clean water and pollinator habitat projects that include community engagement and management.
We worked with the Jordan Area Community Council (JACC) and Rusty and the Crew to add pollinator-friendly plantings in the JACC community garden in North Minneapolis. In spring 2022, volunteers… Read More →
Pollinators play an essential role in Minnesota’s ecosystems. They help plants reproduce; healthy plant populations provide food and habitat to other wildlife and help to clean air and water. Pollinators sustain a healthy, diverse, functioning ecosystem. Without biodiversity, our ecosystem would fail. This is happening today. Increased human activity, pollutants, homogenization of landscapes, and other…
From restoring native plant communities in a floodplain to managing vegetation at a solar farm to deploying goat herds for buckthorn removal, Minnesota Native Landscapes Corp. (MNL) takes on many large-scale projects as part of its mission to “Heal the Earth.” But this Otsego, MN-based ecological restoration business also supports individuals to take action in…
The Metro Blooms Board of Directors is proud to announce the appointment of Laura Scholl as Metro Blooms President and Executive Director. Scholl takes this position after 10 years with the organization, most recently as Associate Director and Director of Development. Scholl joined Metro Blooms as a GreenCorps member in 2012. She has been a…
Rebecca Rice, the Metro Blooms President and Executive Director, has decided to step back to direct the organization’s Blue Thumb program effective May 9, 2022. Laura Scholl, formerly Associate Director and Director of Fund Development, assumes the role of President and Executive Director. “It is an exciting time at Metro Blooms as our organization…
Climate change, the long-term change in the Earth’s temperature, is bringing massive and detrimental consequences. What are these consequences and how do they affect us? Have you noticed the increasingly extreme weather? Like heat waves or flooding rains? The vast majority of scientists agree that human activity is the primary cause of climate change, so…
2022 Environmental Initiative Award, Local Sustainability Impacts, for Brook Gardens: Clean Water + Livability, a multi-partner project engaging a rental community on co-creation of more resilient landscapes 2022 Environmental Excellence Award, Minnesota Erosion Control Association 2021 Summer Blossom Award, Grand Neighborhood Garden, City of Brooklyn Park, for our work engaging rental communities on co-creation of…
The Power of Storytelling
Developing the next generation of leaders is part of West Monroe’s mission, and it’s one reason the digital and business consulting firm supports Metro Blooms’ Sustainable Landcare Training program to develop a skilled green infrastructure workforce for the future. West Monroe works to deliver digital solutions in diverse fields, from helping a healthcare system establish…
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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 →
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…
Who We Are Metro Blooms is a nonprofit that partners with communities to create resilient landscapes and foster clean watersheds, embracing the values of equity and inclusion to solve environmental challenges. We believe that collaboration with community is the most impactful way to heal our earth and we strive to center relationships in all that…
When you walk through your neighborhood, it is not uncommon to see a tree, in a boulevard, marked with a big “X” in bright, neon-green paint. This green “X” indicates that the tree is an ash tree, a target of one of the nation’s most infamous insect pests, the emerald ash borer (EAB). This beetle,…
This project works to transform the impermeable concrete landscape and improve outdoor livability at Riverside Plaza through participatory landscape design, installation, and care focused on stormwater management and urban habitat.… Read More →
Lake Nokomis Blooming Alleys was a citizen-based, neighborhood-focused project to engage local property owners in efforts to improve water quality. The focus of the work was to use rain gardens… Read More →
