Most of the gardens were planted by volunteers — more than 200 volunteers just last year when we started creating the gardens. Working with volunteers was Zerzan’s favorite part of the program. “Volunteers bring so much energy into those spaces,” she said.

Especially children. With children, no planting occurs without a major discovery, Zerzan said. At the Keller Lake planting, there were worms, a toad, insects, even a small necklace. She observed that while adults focus on the plants and weeds, children have much curiosity about everything.

“The kids were like, ‘What is the mulch?, What is the soil?,  What are the bugs?, What all is happening in this environment?’” she said.  “They’re paying attention to the whole ecosystem, which is really fun.”

All the projects are different. At Minnehaha Park, the project is mostly trees and shrubs — including serviceberries and snowberries — that replace invasive buckthorn in a woodland site. This highlights the pollinator value of trees and shrubs, which provide food for pollinators early in the season and are hosts for various species. At the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in Minneapolis’ Theodore Wirth Park, there’s a new pollinator meadow. And Lebanon Hills Regional Park is a good place to see examples of planting for shade and for sun. 

Signs at all the parks will help people identify and learn about the plants, and direct people where to go for more information on doing their own planting projects. At Keller Lake, which historically was part of a waterway system navigated by Dakota people, the non-profit Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi helped incorporate Indigenous cultural knowledge in plant choices for the garden, and visitors will be able to learn more about this on the garden signs.

Where are we now? In 2023, we planted three gardens, replacing 19,120 sq. ft. of turf grass with 15,600 native plants. The projects are at Battle Creek Regional Park, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and the Holland Lake Trailhead at Lebanon Hills Regional Park.

This year so far, we’ve made good progress at Minnehaha Park and Keller Lake. At the Keller Lake planting event, stubborn weeds greeted our arrival, slowing us down. But we’ll get it done. That leaves the last project, Bunker Hills Regional Park, to be completed by the end of the planting season.

Zerzan points out that the parks were originally established to be places where anybody could connect to the natural environment; big fields of turf grass don’t do that. Replacing turf grass with native plants will bring back pollinators and other wildlife, she said, and benefit the parks in other ways that we won’t even see, like contributing to clean water and soil health.  

And Zerzan hopes park visitors, after seeing examples of native plants clearly laid out in cohesive spaces, will leave thinking, “I could do the same thing at my home, with a huge benefit for our lands and pollinators.”

Learn more about Turf to Pollinator Gardens on our website.

Metro Blooms is grateful for the collaboration of all the partners that make our work together possible. We encourage you to check out and support their work!

— Aleli Balagtas, Metro Blooms Editor