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 nature play area, along with raingardens filled with plants to attract bees and butterflies. We’ve been laying the groundwork for over a year as part of a much larger renovation of Brook Gardens, inside and out, by manager Boisclair Corporation. Bit by bit we’re putting in practices that are kinder to the environment and that provide a safe outdoor environment where people want to spend time, encouraging social connection and active living. An important part of the process is working together with residents.

Brook Gardens is one of the latest projects in our work to engage residents of multi-family housing communities in the decision-making when redesigning their outdoors. Each renovation is unique because it is based on community priorities that we learn about by talking to residents. While this is the first time we put in a nature play area, it wasn’t a surprise to hear that play areas were a priority — Brook Gardens is home to many families with children. In comparison, at nearby Brooks Landing, another Boisclair property, the mostly senior population is more interested in easy-to-reach raised gardening beds and ample seating with shade. What is common in all of these projects, though, are sustainable practices, such as raingardens that soak in and clean stormwater and native plantings that provide food for pollinators.

Community celebration for the installation

We held a community event to celebrate the installation of the new raingardens and nature play area in October, complete with snacks, activities for children, and the addition of “Your Yard Can Bee the Change” garden signs so people would know that the raingarden plants provide habitat for bees.

Bonnie Bender, who has lived here for more than 20 years, was herself busy as a bee organizing a finger-painting activity for the children. Bender is one of several resident project stewards who help us connect with the community. Project stewards typically take part in leadership training and attend workshops to learn about raingardens, stormwater and planting natives for habitat. They do door-knocking to get feedback from residents, recruit others to take part, and help out at community events, receiving payment for their participation.

Bender has enjoyed the camaraderie of working with the other project stewards (together the group came up with the idea of finger-painting), and looks forward to future improvements in the landscape. She mentioned that there would be picnic tables and grills, walking paths and trees for shade, something she thought older residents would especially appreciate. But for Bender, who loves children, a top priority is providing more amenities for her community’s youngest residents to work off their energy. “Kids like to climb, and swing, and bounce,” she said.

The nature play area is basically a playground made of natural materials. Ten-foot-tall, cone-shaped trellises made of 2-inch thick tree boughs invite exploration. There’s a grassy hillock featuring a row of tree stumps of different heights and a child-sized mini-bridge to cross. These and other whimsical elements invite children to unleash their creativity in the natural world.

Metro Blooms landscape designer Jennifer Moeller, who created the design, urged the children to make it a space for themselves. “We’re going to let the pollinating plants grow,” she said, “but everything else, use your imagination to use that space as your own — because that’s what it’s for.”

She invited residents to stop by and talk to her and other Metro Blooms staff about the second phase in the redesign. People could look at preliminary plans for 2021, comment on them and make suggestions. They could also “vote” on amenities and on plants by putting sticky dots or stars on their choices from among different options on a poster board.

Some changes this year

The pandemic has presented some challenges in our ability to interact with residents. Due to social-distancing concerns we held only a few in-person events, including this one. Similarly, we did not have the training events and workshops we typically do with project stewards. We looked for alternative ways to engage residents, and decided that work opportunities might help some people, given the economic impact of the pandemic. So we offered equitably paid work to residents to help us install and plant the raingardens. Nine residents worked a total of 36 hours alongside our sustainable landcare crew.

Bender, the project steward, participated in the paid work program. Now she is looking forward to seeing the flowers in the raingarden just outside her front door, in the future. “We planted them. They’ll bloom next year,” she said proudly.

This project was generously supported by the following partners:

Boisclair Corporation
The City of Brooklyn Park
Center for Prevention at Blue Cross Blue Shield MN
African Career, Education and Resource, Inc. (ACER)
The MN Board of Water and Soil Resources (Lawns to Legumes)
Hennepin County

Installation:

Contractor JL Theis, a Blue Thumb Partner
Plants: Glacial Ridge Growers, a Blue Thumb Partner; Bachman’s