Metro Blooms

One more week until the Minnesota State Fair opens! Visit our Blue Thumb - Planting for Clean Water exhibit outside the Eco Experience Building! 🌱⬇️

We gave this rain garden a major refresh! 🌼☀️🐝

For this Design+Build project, we restored an exiting front yard rain garden, adding a stepping stone path that leads to a side door. Gutters were installed by the client on the north side of the house to flow through downspouts into the rain garden. A wide variety of perennials, including blanket flower, monarda, rose milkw**d and marsh blazing star, will bring colorful blooms all growing season long!

That’s a wrap for this summer’s Neighborhood of Rain Gardens! 🌱🏘️🙌

A big shout-out to the Conservation Corps Minnesota & Iowa crew working with us this summer. And special thanks to Jennifer, Jason, and Lucia from our Design + Build team for coordinating projects, designing gardens, and helping the crew out in the field.

Together, we installed rain gardens in several Minneapolis neighborhoods and in St. Louis Park. Our crews prep the rain gardens, and residents get to do the planting! The rain gardens will divert and soak in stormwater, helping to keep runoff from polluting nearby lakes and streams. 💧

Pictured: Haley, Lucy, Esme, Javier and Johannes from the Conservation Corps crew along with Metro Blooms Design+Build Landscape Design Assistant, Jason! Plus, a sampling of the many rain gardens we prepped.

What’s the difference between a rain garden and a bioswale? 🤔

Both manage stormwater and protect water quality, but each functions a little differently:

➡️ Rain gardens are bowl-shaped gardens filled with deep-rooted native plants that capture and infiltrate stormwater runoff. Rain gardens receive and hold large amounts of stormwater runoff, and are designed to drain within 48 hours after a rain event.

➡️ Bioswales are shallow channels designed to capture, infiltrate, and slow the flow of water while conveying it from one point to another. Bioswales are typically longer, narrower, and deeper than rain gardens and are often located next to roads.

Our Design+Build team regularly installs both rain gardens and boulevard bioswales! To learn more about managing stormwater on your property, check our Blue Thumb - Planting for Clean Water Resilient Yards online learnings series: https://bluethumb.org/events/



Pictured: One of the rain gardens Metro Blooms designed at Riverside Plaza, and a Metro Blooms Design+Build boulevard bioswale!

Fall planting season is right around the corner! Learn about the benefits of planting for pollinators during fall in Blue Thumb - Planting for Clean Water’s blog post 🍂🐝⬇️

Planting for Pollinators in Fall – Blue Thumb Fall might be Minnesota’s most underrated season for planting native perennials. While we think of gardening during spring, there are…

We had a great second Sustainable Landcare Training of the summer at Sabathani Community Center! 🌱

➡️ Trainees grew knowledge in watersheds, stormwater, and the importance of stewarding native plants. Many of them will help plant boulevard rain garden projects this fall in South Minneapolis.

➡️ On our second day, we got caught in a torrential downpour near the new boulevard rain gardens on Grand Avenue in Minneapolis. 😮 It was a good opportunity to see firsthand how stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) are essential to reducing street flooding during huge rain events. 🌧️

➡️ Trainees had conversations around environmental justice with the Metro Blooms’ community relations team, listened to wisdom shared by Tanagidan To Win/Tara Perron of Blue Hummingbird Woman about how Dakota and Ojibwe ethics center care for land, water, and plants, and had a meaningful discussion about wealth building with Kenya McKnight-Ahad from the Black Women's Wealth Alliance.

➡️ During a pollinator identification workshop led by Julia Brokaw of The Xerces Society, we explored the connections between environmental justice work and the protection of the endangered rusty patched bumble bee. 🐝

Special thanks to all our guest speakers, and congrats to those who completed the training! 🙌

We’re rolling out another circular patio with this Metro Blooms Design+Build installation! 🪨🔥

This front yard design includes a rain garden tucked next to a natural stone patio. A mix of native blooms, grasses and sedges will enliven the space and bring blooms throughout the growing season for pollinators.

Our client said they couldn’t wait to invite people over and use the patio right away. They were such kind hosts, leaving our install crew cooler with cold drinks every day and even setting up a fan and chairs in the garage when it was very hot! 🧊❤️

Do you live or work close to Sabathani Community Center, the Southside Green Zone, or George Floyd Square? On Monday, August 12 from 12:30-3, Sabathani, Community Members for Environmental Justice (CMEJ), and the City of Minneapolis Health Department are hosting a free environmental justice bus tour! Register here: https://www.tfaforms.com/5119185

We’re looking forward to tabling at Friends of the Mississippi River’s Plants, Pollinators, and Pints night next Tuesday, 8/13 at 5:30 pm! 🌼🐝 Learn more and register below ⬇️

Plants, pollinators and pints: Native plant gardening with nature educator Angie Hong Join FMR at Dual Citizen Brewing to learn about gardening with native plants for better water quality and pollinator habitat!

For a creative and eye-catching approach to your garden design, try a matrix planting! 🌼🌾

Matrix planting is when a sedge or grass is staggered throughout the growing area, with flowering plants added in a scattered pattern. By selecting plants that bloom at different times, you'll always have something popping up from the grassy foundation. Matrix plantings can also help with w**d suppression.

Our Metro Blooms Design+Build team installed this boulevard planting in early spring of 2023. Pollinator-friendly blooms include pale purple coneflower, foxglove beardtongue, butterfly milkw**d, and aromatic aster, paired with fox sedge and prairie dropseed.

Metro Blooms is excited to be tabling at Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi’s Pollinator Festival this Sunday! 🐛🌱💚

Join us on August 11th from 10am to 4:30pm for a day of celebrating environmental education and Indigenous cultures. The Pollinator Festival will feature live music, Native vendors, educational activities, plant walks, bird walks, canoe rides, food trucks, and more! This festival is free to attend and all ages and backgrounds are welcome.

Learn more at https://www.wakantipi.org/. We look forward to seeing you there! 🌼

We're excited for Lawns to Legumes Garden Tour Day this Saturday! 🌼🌱⬇️

Update from the Metro Blooms Design+Build landcare crew! 🌼🐛

The crew has been busy visiting rain gardens and other stormwater best management practices (BMPs) that we provide maintenance services for. Larger rain gardens like this one at Independence Ave in Champlin can bring w**ding challenges in the summer months. Our team focused on hand w**ding some prominent w**ds including sweet clover, thistle and vetch before re-mulching parts of the rain garden. Lots of beautiful native plants growing strong in this one, including purple coneflower, bee balm, and black-eyed Susan!

Our staff have been seeing lots of creeping bellflower out and about, maybe you have too! It's a tall purple flower that outcompetes native plant species more beneficial to pollinators.

While they are lovely to look at, we strongly recommend trying to remove them to protect the diversity of our native plant habitats. Here’s some tips:

🟣 Because creeping bellflower is resistant to many herbicides, repeated hand removal is necessary. Removing all parts of the stems, flowers, and deep carrot-sized roots is necessary to prevent growth.

🟣 Creeping bellflower spreads by both its rhizomes (roots) and seeds. W**d creeping bellflower before it drops its seeds to avoid more explosive growth later on. If you see creeping bellflower starting to flower, remove it as soon as you can.

🟣 You can eat them! We've been told the roots taste somewhat like parsnips!

🟣 If you like their color, plant purple-blooming native plants instead, such as spiderwort, hoary vervain, and blazing stars.

For more tips, check out the UMN’s creeping bellflower info page: https://extension.umn.edu/w**ds/creeping-bellflower

The plantings we installed last year at the brooklyn park small business center are looking great! 🌱🌼

We got to work with community members in installing several native plantings at the business center, which offers low-cost office space options for small businesses. The new blooms outside the center bring in pollinators and will help create a natural division from the surrounding roads as they grow in!

Read more about the project in our blog post from last year: https://metroblooms.org/bringing-beauty-to-the-brooklyn-park-small-business-center/

Who is Metro Blooms Design+Build? 🌼💧📐

➡️ Metro Blooms Design+Build provides high quality, resilient, and sustainable design, installation, and landcare services for residential and commercial landscapes. We value design, and enjoy bringing gardens to life that uplift both the aesthetic vision and sustainability goals of our clients.

➡️ A for-profit company owned by the nonprofit Metro Blooms, Metro Blooms Design+Build offers financial support and core programmatic services to meet the shared mission, vision and values of Metro Blooms. A portion of Metro Blooms Design+Build’s profit goes towards the Metro Blooms nonprofit, to support our community-based programming.

Learn more about how to engage with Metro Bloom Design+Build’s services on their new How We Work page: https://metrobloomsdb.com/how-we-work/

Just last year the mini-park at Riverside Plaza was an empty space next to a parking lot, with no trees or gardens or benches. Now, in the early evening, elders sit on the benches together, chatting and observing the world around them. 🌳

Since 2018, Metro Blooms and the Riverside Plaza community have collaborated to redesign their outdoor spaces for greater environmental resilience and better quality of outdoor living. In the mini-park, our most recent project, we collaborated with community to transform an underutilized open space into a beautiful natural space for residents to have access to nature in the heart of the city.

In our latest blog post, we share more about our collaboration and hear from Riverside Plaza community members about what the project has meant to them: https://metroblooms.org/creating-sustainable-green-space-with-community/

Riverside Plaza Tenants Association

Our Design+Build crew is taking patio installation to the next level! 🪨🤩

This yard transformation included a new pollinator-friendly boulevard garden, a bee lawn, native plantings, circular raised beds in the front yard, and a shady fescue seeding in the side yard. A circular flagstone patio and pathway leading to the house’s spigot ties everything together!

Metro Blooms Design + Build has an opening for a seasonal installation crew member! 🌱

Installation crew members work to implement the landscape plans that our designers have created. Designs are typically naturalistic, and plant-focused. Projects range in size from a single front yard rain garden to a multi-family or community-based project that includes large plantings as well as hardscapes. Our crew members take pride in installing beautiful and thoughtful landscapes that provide resilient outdoor spaces for both humans and urban wildlife. We are dedicated to safety and thoroughness in all our work.

Ideal candidates have a minimum of 1 year of landscape experience and/or a strong willingness to learn. The position will remain open until filled.

Learn more and apply at https://metroblooms.org/employment/

Metro Blooms Design+Build is looking for a talented photographer in our community who can capture the stunning landscapes of our residential projects. 📸✨ We are particularly interested in finding a photographer who identifies as BIPOC. If you or someone you know fits the bill, please send us a DM! We can't wait to showcase our beautiful work through your unique lens. 🌼🏡

We love showing kids how cool bugs are! 🐛🐝🦋

This summer, young adult staff at Metro Blooms are leading a series of kids pollinator programs at the Beam Apartments & Townhomes Flowers that Beam Garden in North Minneapolis! These photos are from a session we led earlier this month, filled with lots of exploring, art-making, and insect-surveying. 🔍

Thank you to Monarch Joint Venture and the Deane Fund for making this programming possible!

Metro Blooms Design + Build has a new online Portfolio! 🌼🖼️

Get a behind-the-scenes look at featured projects from start to finish. We’ve displayed a sampling of sustainable landscape designs for projects large and small, including lots of photos, concept designs and site plans: https://metrobloomsdb.com/portfolio/

Another beautiful installation completed by the Metro Blooms Design+Build team! Props to the crew for working through the rain on this one. 🌧️

This design includes new rain gardens in both the front and backyards, new fruit trees, and a low-growing planting in the side yard. A winding stepping stone path leads to the client’s compost in the backyard.

It’s always gratifying to see a project come together from concept design to final result! 🌱

Last month we wrapped up our first Sustainable Landcare Training of the season at the Regional Apprenticeship Training Center! 🌼🌟

During three in-person sessions, trainees learned firsthand about watersheds and the importance of stormwater management. They also gained hands-on experience identifying native and introduced plants, conducting inspections of Stormwater Best Management Practices, and conducting a pollinator survey. We were grateful to have guest speakers from the City of Minneapolis Government Water Resources division, the Black Women's Wealth Alliance and Dragons Wynd!

Several participants are now taking part in a paid next-step mentor program, matched with mentors to support them as they explore green careers and pursue their personal, educational and career goals.

Learn more about the Sustainable Landcare Training: https://bluethumb.org/sustainable-landcare-training/

Have you heard about Lawns to Legumes Garden Tour Day? 🦋🌸

On Saturday, August 3rd from 9am - 12pm, Lawns to Legumes coaches, previous participants, and other DIY wildlife gardeners are hosting neighborhood native garden tours across Minnesota. Get inspired and connect with folks who are planting for pollinators in your area!

Visit Blue Thumb - Planting for Clean Water’s Garden Tour Day webpage for a map of tour sites or to sign up as a Native Garden Host: https://bluethumb.org/garden-tour-day/

Do you have a bee lawn or are interested in starting one? 🌱🐝

University of Minnesota researchers are conducting a brief survey on bee lawn establishment, and would appreciate your valuable input! Your feedback will help directly guide future research and a subsequent field guide for best practices in successfully establishing a bee lawn. As part of the survey, you can opt-in for a chance to win a $100 gift card via random drawing to a local supplier of bee lawn seed.

Access the survey here: https://umn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2f7KmtAy2UtRgai

Stormwater features are everywhere! 🌱💧

Many public schools capture their stormwater runoff through rain gardens and other vegetated stormwater best management practices (BMPs). Our landcare crew helps maintain Minneapolis Public Schools rain gardens to make sure they are properly functioning.

Cutting back dead plant material, w**ding, and removing anything blocking rain garden inlets helps them keep capturing stormwater runoff and protecting water quality!

Pictured: Rain gardens at Burroughs Elementary School and Field Elementary School

All of our Turf to Pollinator Gardens projects are different. 🌳🌾🌼 At Minnehaha Park, it’s mostly trees and shrubs. 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.

What all of these projects have in common? Replacing turf grass with native plants to bring back pollinators and other wildlife, inspiring people to do the same at their own homes. In our latest blog post, we share about the journey we’ve been on with the program in partnership with Wilderness in the City and many other collaborators. Take a peek: https://metroblooms.org/turf-to-pollinator-gardens-in-twin-cities-regional-parks/

It’s almost been a year since we planted the Flowers that Beam Garden with community members at BEAM Apartments, and things are growing in nicely! 🌼

The yellow yarrow, pink-white beardtongue, and purple catmint were creating a colorful palette of blooms when we stopped by.

Learn more about the Flowers That Beam Community Garden and other projects on Metro Blooms’ Project Gallery: https://metroblooms.org/projects/

Don’t forget to water your new pollinator planting! 💧🌼🐝

With the extra rain in Minnesota this summer, gardens have needed less supplemental watering. Now that drier days are ahead, keep these watering tips from Blue Thumb - Planting for Clean Water in mind to give new native plants a strong start:

It's been a rainy spring, but summer can bring drier days to Minnesota. Here's some tips for keeping your pollinator garden hydrated:

💧 For new plantings, water your plants a minimum of 1” per week, more on especially dry weeks.

💧 Water a longer time every few days, rather than a little bit every day. This helps water go deeper into the soil, encouraging your plants to grow deeper roots and become more resilient to drought.

💧 The best time to water is early in morning while the ground is still cool. This helps the water soak into the soil. Avoid watering at night, as water tends to rest in the soil and encourages rot and pests.

For more native planting and maintenance tips, check out our newly updated Plan a Project page: https://bluethumb.org/plan-a-project/