Working at Autumn Ridge: Year Three, in a Pandemic
We have adjusted our work to pandemic times, experiencing challenges but also opportunities. Here’s an update on Autumn Ridge Apartments in Brooklyn Park.
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Summer Internship: Learning About Raingardens
One thing interns are sure to learn about at Metro Blooms is raingardens. This summer we hosted Althea Kuzniewski, an environmental studies major at the University of Minnesota. Althea came to us through the U’s Institute on the Environment, in an internship supported by Ecolab. She had the job of visiting and assessing raingardens we…
Onsite Consultation Request Confirmation
Thank you for contacting us! You will receive an email confirmation of this request, and another one when your consultation time is scheduled and confirmed by one of our designers. Go back Home Go back to Consultation Description
Virtual Consultation Request Confirmation
Thank you for contacting us! You will receive an email confirmation of this request, and another email when your consultation time is scheduled and confirmed by one of our designers. If you’d like to get started in the meantime, our consultation will include a virtual walk-through of your site and you will have some homework…
Happy Birthday, Riverside Plaza Raingarden!
Residents and other community members helped us plant this raingarden at Riverside Plaza on June 18, 2019. This video, by Yordanose Solomone, Metro Blooms Equitable Engagement Manager, celebrates the raingarden’s first birthday and features a song written for it by Riverside composer Ardo Muse and singer Abdihakiin Aden Farrah.* It may be the first raingarden…
Employment
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…
Neighborhood Projects
For over ten years, we have worked with neighborhoods, cities, and so many other partners to install accessible and functional projects with their residents.
Boulevard Bioswales: Improving Water Quality, Conserving Pollinators, Strengthening Communities
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,…
Riverside Plaza
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 →
Standish Ericsson Permeable Alley
Working in conjunction with numerous partners, this project led to the first permeable alleyway, privately owned, in Minneapolis. We monitored runoff in the alley for a year. Then, in the… Read More →
Minneapolis Public Schools Maintenance
Metro Blooms works with Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) to maintain and inspect stormwater management practices at more than 20 sites district wide. These practices include rain gardens, underground infiltration systems,… Read More →
Nokomis Neighbors for Clean Water
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 →
Autumn Ridge
Autumn Ridge Apartments is a 17-acre, 366-unit rental community in Brooklyn Park. This is our pilot site for our equitable engagement framework, which includes resident-centered design, installation, and training to… Read More →
Great Streets 38th Street
Metro Blooms and art partner Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center (CAFAC) worked with local businesses and community organizations to add pollinator plantings and pollinator-themed art along the 38th Street commercial… Read More →
Neighborhood of Raingardens
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…
Carol Kuechler
Jennifer Ehlert
Deborah Jopp
Rich Harrison
Mission + Vision + Equity
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.
Equitable Engagement
At Metro Blooms we strive to make engagement equitable through real relationships, supporting opportunities for silenced voices to be heard, and implementing what we’ve heard from those most impacted by environmental and social injustices. We prioritize partnering with Black, Indigenous, People of Color, renters, and low-income communities. Intentionality: We collaborate with local community members and…
Blue Thumb Education
Blue Thumb – Planting for Clean Water is a partnership of local government, landscape contractors, native plant nurseries and other entities committed to the promotion of native plantings, rain gardens, and shoreline plantings. Blue Thumb is managed by Metro Blooms and provides our education programs, including the ones listed below. Learn more about Blue Thumb…
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Give to Metro Blooms
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. Give now using the form below, or learn about more ways to give.
Privacy Policy
Who we are Our website address is: https://metroblooms.org. What personal data we collect and why we collect it Comments When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data… Read More →
Equitable Engagement in Environmental Work
On June 18, dozens of community volunteers turned out to help Metro Blooms plant a raingarden at Riverside Plaza, a huge, high-density apartment complex in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. They pulled… Read More →
A Decade of Neighborhood of Raingardens
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…
Conservation Corps MN & Iowa: a Raingarden Partner
When Metro Blooms is in the field, there’s a good chance that the crew on site are wearing yellow helmets. If so, they are likely a crew from Conservation Corps… Read More →
Measuring Runoff on a Permeable City Alley
How well does permeable pavement reduce runoff? Metro Blooms set out to answer this question in a privately-owned alley in Minneapolis’ Standish-Ericsson neighborhood. We compared how much rain flowed down… Read More →
Raingarden Care and Stormwater Credits at MPS
Maintaining raingardens to support clean water, provide habitat and save money