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Low-Cost and Accessible Gardening Resources
Do you know there are many resources available for free or at low cost? Some of them may be right in your neighborhood. Have a look below to find out where you can get trees, compost, mulch, and seeds — and to learn more about gardening. We’ll also add upcoming events occasionally.
Equitable Engagement Resources
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.
Learning and Job Resources
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.
Grant Resources
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.
Renter and Housing Resources
The list below offers many helpful renter and housing resources.
A Healthier Tree Canopy, One Tree at a Time
Metro Blooms is working with residents in and near North Minneapolis to replace condemned ash trees and plant new ones that will strengthen the future canopy. These projects are about more than trees—they’re about community, care, and resilience. Metro Blooms is well-known for rain gardens and native plantings for pollinators, but trees are just as…
Rain Gardens in Seward: Research, Training, and Community
In the Seward neighborhood in Minneapolis, a cluster of boulevard rain gardens is doing more than soaking up stormwater. They are a living experiment in plant research, a training ground for young landcare workers, and even a canvas for student art. Since last fall, Metro Blooms has been working under contract with the City of…
More Ways to Give
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.
Partnering With Green Garden Bakery: Vegetables, Desserts and Rain Gardens
Jaden Scott says the best restaurants and bakeries are the ones with items you can’t find anywhere else. Like East African sweet potato donut holes. Or gluten-free lemon zucchini muffins. These are just two of the goodies offered by Green Garden Bakery, a youth-run business known for its vegetable-based desserts where Jaden, 19, is the…
Our Commitments
Metro Blooms Land and Labor Acknowledgement: We are on the stolen homelands and treaty territory of the Dakota Oyate [oy-yah-tay]. Minnesota, the US Government, and European white colonizers carried out genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced removal of the Dakota to acquire land and wealth. The Ioway [eye-oh-way], Hocąk [ho-chunk], Anishinaabe [Ah-Nee-shin-AH-bay] and other Indigenous Nations…
Fundraising Principles
Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden
About The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis features a pollinator meadow. Staff at Eloise Butler created the design and community volunteers, along with the Mississippi River Green Team and Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa, planted the meadow. The matrix style of the meadow includes flowering plants mixed in with…
Turf to Pollinator Gardens
Creating Native Plant Pollinator Havens Do you want to attract more pollinators in your yard? We’ll show you how, through Turf to Pollinator Gardens. In partnership with Wilderness in the City and others, we planted six native plant pollinator gardens in Twin Cities regional parks. The gardens replaced turf grass lawn, which offers little food…
Who We Are
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. Vision Engage communities to create resilient landscapes. Values Ecological health; environmental justice; education; inspiration; community engagement; and partnership
Mikaela Ayim
Brook Gardens Redesign With Community
Residents of affordable housing communities, many of them long-term community members, may care deeply about where they live but not have the ability to influence decisions that impact their home. We partnered with the Brook Gardens community in Brooklyn Park to center resident priorities. Brook Gardens is a townhome/apartment complex that is home to many…
Our Work
Metro Blooms provides resources to help people care for land and water. This often includes support to install rain gardens that filter and clean water or native plantings that provide habitat for pollinators. Partnership and relationships are central to how we work. We partner with community groups, nonprofits, local government, business owners and individuals, from…
Turf to Pollinator Gardens in Twin Cities Regional Parks
One morning last May, fifth-graders from the American Indian Magnet School gathered in a circle on a little island near the shore of Keller Lake Regional Park in Maplewood. Teacher Thomas Draskovic, a Lakota/Dakota culture and language specialist, led student drummers in a song acknowledging the four directions, the sky, and Mother Earth. Then it…
John Kinara Appointed New Chair of Metro Blooms Board
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…
Gardening with City of Lakes Community Land Trust Homeowners
Shannon modestly calls herself a “first-grader” when it comes to gardening. But she clearly knows a thing or two. Just ask about her yard, and she’ll tell you about her hostas and rhododendron; the hydrangea near her front porch that exploded in blooms last summer; her royal oak, Ralph; and the most recent addition: a…
Who We Are
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.
Home
Coffee Chat: Sowing Seeds for Our Future Learn about winter sowing for native plants and celebrate our new Strategic Plan. Thursday, Feb. 19 on ZOOM 8:30–9:00am OR 6:30–7pm Register here
Environmental Justice
For Metro Blooms, Environmental Justice means healing and liberation for people and the earth, from toxic pollutants in our air, land, and water and freedom from the systems that cause these harms. Environmental Justice isn’t just about the environment, it’s social and economic justice, health, the quality of your surroundings, access to food and green…
Jordan Area Community Council Garden
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 →
Help Tuck Pollinators into Bed for the Winter
“Leaving the leaves” is how we can help pollinators get ready for cold weather. Last autumn, Jessica Miller took some of her neighbors’ raked-up leaves and spread them out in her yard. She put layers in her garden beds and small piles around her trees and shrubs. In a society that prizes the pristine lawn…
Why Do We Care About Pollinators?
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…
Sponsor Spotlight: Minnesota Native Landscapes
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…
Rebecca Rice Steps Back as Executive Director of Metro Blooms
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…
Impact Climate Change in Your Yard With a Rain Garden
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…