Metro Blooms on WCCO

Metro Blooms with Sentyrz Supermarket on WCCO 4 News, 4/18/2012

 

Lead Landscape Designer Michael Keenan recently spoke for Metro Blooms in North Minneapolis for WCCO News. Michael highlighted the Sentyrz Supermarket raingarden and explained the fundamentals of raingardens and how they help the Mississippi River. Happy Earth Week!

Earth Day 2012: Teaming up with Project for Pride and Living

This Earth Day, Metro Blooms is teaming up with Project for Pride in Living (PPL) to build a raingarden. Not just any raingarden mind you, but a raingarden rich in community initiative. The Earth Day project will complete PPL’s renovation of an affordable apartment building at 2521 Girard Ave N. The housing building is part of PPL’s work in the Minneapolis Foreclosure Recovery Plan,which is supported by the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.  Read more »

And the Survey Says…

Here in the office we’ve been analyzing Raingarden Workshop surveys from years gone past, pulling out  trends and interesting snippets that can point us to a better awareness of our audience, understanding their needs and interests. Here’s a summary of the strongest findings using Pearson’s Correlations to keep you in the loop… (sparing the extensive excel spreadsheets!)

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Spotlight Projects: Spring 2012

All of us here at Metro Blooms are excited for our 2012 projects… we have dozens!  :-D There are two however that we’d like to describe more in depth: Urban Homeworks and the Seward Montessori School Magnet. These projects indeed don’t stop at the raingarden themselves. Both promise a high level of initiative and enthusiasm to bring the raingardens to a higher level of education and community involvement. 

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Metro Blooms Staff featured at U of M College of Design and Humphrey School

 

Colleen O’Dell is both a Research Assistant in Practice for Metro Blooms, as well as a Masters Student at both the U of M College of Design and the Humphrey School in Minneapolis.  To entwine the worlds of academia and non-profit work, she’s researching the feasibility of an endowment that will fund perpetual maintenance of raingardens and other green infrastructure in the metro region.  Colleen anticipates that this fund will significantly reduce the cost of green infrastructure maintenance, which will encourage cities, schools, and other public agencies to install more green infrastructure as part of new developments. Read more »

The High Line: A Harmony of Plants, Materials, and Space

This Thanksgiving, I chose to visit the High Line, a world famous park built on top of an abandoned elevated train line above Manhattan’s West Side.  The park is still under construction, with two thirds of the line already converted into park and the last third targeted for acquisition by the City of New York.  I don’t want to delve too deeply into the history of the High Line as you can learn everything you want to know at the website.  I want to talk about the experience of visiting the place and how the integration of plants, materials, and spatial design have created a unique place that is mesmerizing, beautiful and brilliantly designed to the smallest detail.

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Give to the Max Day 11/16/11

 

Yesterday was the long awaited Give to the Max Day, and oh what a memorable day it was!

The entire 24-hour donation window raised about $13.5 million for hundreds of  Minnesota non-profits… now you don’t see that everyday do you?! Wow! All donations will be dedicated to education, health, disability services, immigration and refugee aid, family services, wildlife conservation, and much more. Read more »

Powderhorn Leaf Raking 2011

When it comes to late fall in Minnesota we’re all lucky to get a perfect warm sunny day that lands on  the weekend!

Last Saturday (11/12), Metro Blooms and local volunteers embraced this fortunate day with a raking project near Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis. Read more »

Blooms goes Blog!

 Welcome to the new Metro Blooms blog!

Here is where you’ll be able to dig into all the rain garden extras such as:

News, events, affiliates, plant bios and folklore, and much more!

We look forward to being blog buddies, feel free to join in the conversation!

-Nick for Metro Blooms Staff