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 →
If Metro Blooms were a vehicle (green energy-powered, of course), the community would be the driver. The destination is always the same: clean water, habitat and a more beautiful environment.… Read More →
City of Minneapolis Great Streets Program Recipient Metro Blooms to Unveil Unique Art Installation that Manages Storm Water Runoff Open House to take place at Black Forest Inn on Wednesday,… Read More →
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 →
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 →
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…
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.
During the six years that Becca Cerra has had a studio at Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center (CAFAC), she never noticed the Goodridge Building, one of CAFAC’s neighbors at George Floyd Square. With a non-descript brick front, it looked like just another quiet office space among a string of local businesses that make up the…
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…
“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…
A pollinator garden on 38th Street and Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis, steps from our office, is a garden for all seasons. At the height of the summer, there are blooming coneflowers and black-eyed Susans. Right now the garden is blanketed in white, the coneflowers covered with snow hats. It’s the perfect backdrop for viewing the…
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…
For over ten years, we have worked with neighborhoods, cities, and so many other partners to install accessible and functional projects with their residents.
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,…
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 →
