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Fall Raingarden Maintenance

Well folks it’s time.  It seems to me like our spattering of 70 degree days are done for the year, which means you can trade in your lawn mower for…  Read More

Volunteer

We are a mission-based organization dedicated to resilient landscapes, and volunteers provide a meaningful impact in the work we do. From time to time, we can use support to help us with planting, maintenance and landcare (such as pulling weeds), and with administrative tasks such as mailings, office support or tabling at events. Opportunities to…

Rusty patched bumblebee with wildflowers

Turf to Pollinator Gardens

We are planting “seeds” for future pollinator gardens within our communities. Working with the nonprofit Wilderness in the City, we’re installing six pollinator-friendly demonstration gardens in parks across the Twin Cities. We hope to inspire park visitors to take home ideas for incorporating native plants into their outdoor spaces. Each garden features all Minnesota-native plants…

Brooklyn Park residents helping install the Brooklyn Park Small Business Center plantings.

Bringing Beauty to the Brooklyn Park Small Business Center

Drive along Brooklyn Boulevard in Brooklyn Park, and you’ll pass a typical sprawling parking lot for a shopping center. But look a little closer, and you’ll see something different about the green strip bordering the road. Amidst the typical turfgrass, cheerful clumps of native grasses and flowers beckon visitors, plantings arranged in gently curving beds…

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Our 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. Learn about our work

Landcare training participant weeding

Sustainable Landcare Training: Emerging Green Jobs

A job inspecting rain gardens was not exactly on Edwin’s radar when he decided to join Metro Blooms’ Sustainable Landcare Training program. The North Minneapolis resident had done some gardening in middle school and learned about plants in recent volunteer work. What he didn’t know was the potential for this interest to turn into well-paid…

Volunteer!

Volunteers make a huge difference in what we do at Metro Blooms. As a mission-based organization dedicated to resilient landscapes, we are always looking for people to give their time to make an impactful change in their communities. You could help with planting, take part in maintenance (weeds, those weeds!), and give gardening guidance to others…

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

red planter with native flowers near red pergola

38th Street: Plants at Mama Sheila’s House of Soul

Earlier in the fall, passers-by might have noticed some bright-red planters, with late-season blooms spilling out, at the entrance to Mama Sheila’s House of Soul in Minneapolis. They matched perfectly with the outdoor tables and pergola. It was almost as if it had been planned that way all along. But it was something new. In…

Laying out plants in a raingarden

Managing Stormwater With Neighborhood of Raingardens

This past summer, we teamed up with neighborhoods, cities, and the Conservation Corps of Minnesota & Iowa (CCM) to install raingardens in residents’ yards and teach them about sustainable landscaping practices along the way. These efforts were part of our Neighborhood of Raingardens program, which aims to make clean-water planting projects easier and more affordable…

bee in plant stem

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…

38th Street: More Nature at Hardshell Fitness

The more nature, the better, for Ben Swarts. A couple of years ago, when he moved his business, Hardshell Fitness, into a former gas station on 38th Street at Longfellow, Swarts “threw” some seeds down behind the building. Today that space is a beautiful wildflower garden. Now he looks at the gray expanse of paved…

All Nations Church: Planting Seeds of Stewardship

Bendu Kollie wants to learn as much as she can about the plants growing in her church’s raingarden. Her church community, All Nations Seventh-Day Adventist Church, planted it in August with the help of Metro Blooms in a landscape renovation to manage stormwater and help pollinators. She hopes it plants seeds of stewardship among the…

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

Wrapping Up 2018 with a Great Big Thanks

Thank you, friends. Thank you for taking action this year to restore the ecological function of our yards and neighborhoods, whether you were attending our workshops, volunteering your time with…  Read More

Gardening for Environmental Health

Board member Carol Kuechler’s story with Metro Blooms: In 2007, I first saw Metro Blooms’ work while touring two Minneapolis neighborhoods where raingardens and other stormwater management strategies prevented water…  Read More

Creating Climate Resilient Yards

We live in unsettled times, and nowhere is this more evident than outside our own windows. Through them, we see more extreme weather events every year. Leslie Yetka, of the Freshwater…  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

Permeable Pavement Maintenance

You’ve got this great new permeable pavement in your driveway. Now what? As with everything we value, some level of maintenance is required in order to keep it looking good…  Read More

Collecting Native Seeds for Garden Expansion

Many of Minnesota’s native plants are seed factories. Most of our favorite species, while being fairly non-aggressive spreaders in the garden, produce large quantities of viable seed that can delight…  Read More