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 →
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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…
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.
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.
City of Champlin Landcare
Metro Blooms began working with the City of Champlin in 2014 to maintain large-scale rain gardens that infiltrate runoff from the Champlin City Hall and Police Department. That partnership has… 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 →
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…
Rich Harrison
Redesigning Outdoor Spaces With Residents at Rental Communities in Brooklyn Park
Major changes are coming to the outdoor spaces at two affordable housing communities in Brooklyn Park. Metro Blooms has been engaging with residents at Brooks Landing and nearby Brook Gardens… Read More →
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 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 →
Autumn Ridge and Building Capacity
Metro Blooms is coordinating a major landscape renovation at an affordable housing complex in Brooklyn Park involving many partners, including residents, the owner, local government, a community organization and the watershed district.
Be a grower instead of mower: eco-landscaping expert joins Metro Blooms
The way Douglas Owens-Pike sees it, people can spend less time and money on their landscaping, all the while creating more beautiful, resilient yards. They can reduce their grass-cutting and… Read More →
Metro Blooms’ Maintenance Training Pilot Program
The Sustainable Need to Weed “How many of you, if we go out to weed right now, would know what you’re doing?” Anna Bierbauer, our Metro Blooms landscape designer, asks.… Read More →
A Year In Summary – 2016
The end of a year naturally brings about a desire to reflect on what we as an organization have achieved, what’s made us pound our heads on our desks, and… Read More →
Metro Blooms Expands Monarch Conservation in Minnesota Metropolitan Area
As we approach monarch conservation from all angles, we rely on partners who work in different arenas, with different, yet related, expertise. Focusing on restoration of native plants in… Read More →
A Year in Summary
As I began thinking about a summary of our year at Metro Blooms, I started thinking about what excites me the most about my job. At Metro Blooms, we couple… Read More →
Blooming Alleys Partnership Results
In our first post about the Blooming Alleys Partnership I described the collaborative meeting we had in April, here at Sabathani, with all of our project partners to figure out what… Read More →
What Is Blooming Alleys All About?
Blooming Alleys is a program of Metro Blooms that aims to protect waterways, create habitat, and transform communities by working with blocks of residents to re-imagine what their alleyway looks like… Read More →
Blue Thumb/Metro Blooms Merger: Frequently Asked Questions
Metro Blooms and Blue Thumb are Merging! The following describes the current understanding of how the Blue Thumb program would be governed and would operate following a merger of the… Read More →
2014 Triumphs And Lessons Learned
Wow. I know I said last year was busy, but 2014 was so busy we hardly had time to blog about, well, anything. Over the last 12 months we’ve worked… Read More →
Raingarden Maintenance: Plant Replacement And Establishment
As you may have read in our recent blog post ‘Green Streets for Blue Waters’, our two year project in partnership with the City of Bloomington just wrapped up. The project… Read More →
Blooming Schoolyards 2013
Many Metro Blooms supporters have not heard of Blooming Schoolyards, Metro Blooms’ K-12 outdoor classroom education program. And what a shame that is because I can tell you from experience… Read More →
Lake Nokomis Water Quality Survey
Metro Blooms has recently taken on its largest survey yet. Throughout February we’ve been prepping, administering and entering oodles of data from our first ever KAP study (KAP stands for… Read More →
End Of The Year Update
As the end of 2012 approaches Metro Blooms is looking back on some of the big moments we had this year. As always we started the year out with a… Read More →
Biography Of The Month
Metro Blooms has been thinking, “wouldn’t it be nice if the people we work with and outreach to knew us on a more personal level so we could really connect?”… Read More →
Blooming Schoolyards
S. MPLS– This Spring, Metro Blooms has been submersed in the world of Environmental Education. To develop the Blooming Schoolyards program, we teamed up with Minneapolis Public Schools and STEM… Read More →
Spotlight Projects: Spring 2012
All of us here at Metro Blooms are excited for our 2012 projects… we have dozens! 😀There are two however that we’d like to describe more in depth: Urban Homeworks… Read More →
Give To The Max Day 11/16/11
Yesterday was the long awaited Give to the Max Day, and oh what a memorable day it was! The entire 24-hour donation window raised about $13.5 million for hundreds of Minnesota… Read More →