Creating Sustainable Green Space With Community

Three men after planting in a large community garden

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 to a community project.

Abdi’s children were among the many families and individuals — adults, teens, youth and elders alike — who turned out to help plant 23 trees at a new mini-park at Riverside Plaza, a collaboration between Metro Blooms and the Riverside Plaza community.

A sign in a young garden explains about rain gardens — A sign in the mini-park explaining how rain gardens work

Several adults and youth planting a tree together — Lots of helping hands

Partnership with a community

Riverside Plaza’s high-rise towers and buildings are a well-known landmark in the Minneapolis skyline. Designed by renowned architect Ralph Rapson in the 1970s and built primarily of concrete, the monumental edifice is home to some 3,500 tenants, many of them immigrants from East Africa.

Since 2018, Metro Blooms and the community have collaborated to redesign outdoor spaces for greater environmental resilience and better quality of outdoor living. Working with the Riverside Plaza Tenant Association (RPTA) and owner Sherman Associates, we’ve engaged with residents at community meetings, workshops, social events and community-planting events. Resident input has helped shape the designs of several rain gardens that we planted together and that divert and soak in stormwater, helping to prevent pollution in the nearby Mississippi River.

Community leader and elder Weli Hassan, executive director of the RPTA, has led many of these efforts.

“We had community meetings and we talked with the residents, including elders, parents and youth. And they really liked it because they could see that their space was going to be changed and there were going to be beautiful gardens with flowers and trees and places to sit and enjoy nature,” he said. “Everybody came out to help.”

Youths, adults, elders planting a large community garden together — Planting a rain garden, 2019

In the mini-park, our most recent project, we collaborated to transform an underutilized open space into a beautiful natural space for residents to have access to nature in the heart of the city. We started planning and designing the park together in 2021, and installed it last year, with help from residents at three community planting events.

“My job was to listen to the community and put their ideas to paper,” said landscape architect Rich Harrison, Co-Director of Design for Metro Blooms. Harrison has worked closely with the community since our first rain garden project together. “They wanted a clean, safe place to relax in the shade, and lots of colorful flowers. We added pedestrian lights, trash cans, benches, a short fence along Cedar Avenue and lots of trees. The rain gardens are filled with seasonal blooming perennials.”

Planting trees together

At the tree-planting event, there was an air of anticipation when the trailer truck carrying the trees rumbled into the parking lot near the park. People pulled on gardening gloves, divided into small, informal planting crews and got to work. One by one, each tree was carefully lifted down from the trailer and carried off to its designated spot amidst shouts of encouragement. Planting crews trimmed tree roots, shoveled out the pre-dug holes and made sure each tree stood straight. After planting, the trees were mulched and watered.

Three men carrying tree sapling in a large pot — Moving a tree to its new home in the mini-park

Abdi was pleased her children took part. “The kids will remember this,” she said in an interview a few weeks later. As she had anticipated, they received hands-on experience in planting trees. More important, she said, they have a positive memory of taking action to help the community.

She marveled at how just last year the mini-park was an empty space next to a parking lot, with no trees or gardens or benches. Now, in the early evening, elders sit on the benches together, chatting and observing the world around them. “They really enjoy it. They talk to each other, they laugh, they watch people, they drink their tea,” Abdi said.

And she has the satisfaction of knowing that her children had a hand in helping to make the park a reality. “My kids … even if they move out … when they come back, they can say, we planted that tree,” she said.

— Aleli Balagtas, Metro Blooms Editor

This partnership was supported by Sherman Associates, Hennepin County, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization.