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native plants
In partnership with the City of Minneapolis and the Lyndale neighborhood, Spark-Y recently planted the Blaisdell Avenue South bike lane medians with over 2000 native plants. Black-eyed Susan, Fragrant Giant Hyssop, Little Bluestem, Fox Sedge, Golden Alexander, Blue Flag Irises, and Lobelia now grace what was once a bare patch, filled with weeds.
The following blog post was written by Jeremy Alsaker, Sustainability Educator at Spark-Y.
At Spark-Y we love winter, even as we enter the dreaded stretch of cold from January through March. Why? Because we have the chance to plan for what we’re going to do in the Spring! To help us get through the next few cold months, we embrace the opportunity to plan our spring and summer plantings and projects. Planning is vital to all our projects, especially those that involve planting. In particular, native plants require a lot of planning since many of them have specific times when they can put down roots. We especially like planning and planting when our youth can be involved. So, that is why we are so excited to begin another project with the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization (MWMO). Starting this February, we will be working with the MWMO to install a green rooftop on their headquarters in Minneapolis.
Photo of Noble Rot rooftop in Portland, OR. Photo taken from their website.
We previously partnered with the MWMO to build a hydroponics system on their rooftop and have seen firsthand the great work the MWMO does for the community, and up and down our region of the Mississippi.
The MWMO’s green roof (seen here in September 2016) captures stormwater and slows the flow of runoff from the building. Green roofs provide a variety of benefits for the building occupants as well as to the environment.
In their own words: “The MWMO encompasses 25,309 acres (39.5 square miles) of fully developed urban lands and waters. We partner with our member communities to invest in green infrastructure that captures, cleans and reuses stormwater runoff. Our team monitors and tracks water quality in the watershed and conducts education and outreach to promote active environmental stewardship among residents.”
Aerial image of MWMO building and property showing proximity of building to Mississippi River to the west (left side of image). Image taken from Google Earth 2023.
Their mission “to lead, and to foster stewardship of the watershed with actions that promote civic ownership and responsibility and through measures that achieve diverse and functional ecosystems” will help us reach our goals of empowering youth to learn about sustainability.
How can we not be excited?
The MWMO reached out to Spark-Y to improve their green infrastructure at their headquarters in Northeast Minneapolis (just a hop, skip, and a jump from our own HQ). The MWMO already practices many water-saving strategies on their property, including rainwater storage, permeable pavers, rain gardens, and earthworks. We are excited to extend their efforts to the roof!
Green roofs provide many ecological services if executed properly. They help to slow the flow of stormwater, which reduces erosion and pollution runoff, and lengthens the life of management systems. Additionally, green roofs reduce the energy needed to heat or cool a building by providing shade, thermal mass, and insulation. Our green roof in particular will provide habitat for native species of both flora and fauna, which is at a premium in urban environments.
Image of the layers involved in a green rooftop installation, including non-permeable layers, a rockbed layer, soil and then a plant layer. Photo taken from Knapp, & Schmauck, Sebastian & Zehnsdorf, Andreas. (2019). Biodiversity Impact of Green Roofs and Constructed Wetlands as Progressive Eco-Technologies in Urban Areas. Sustainability. 11. 5846. 10.3390/su11205846.
Rooftop planter with natives from designer Julie Farris for Gardenista - taken from their website (photo by Matthew Williams)
Starting this month, we will be enlisting the help of our youth partners to renovate and expand the green roof on the top of the MWMO headquarters. The rest of this winter and early spring, we will be educating our youth on green roof best practices, how to work safely, and the native plant species which will be soon growing up there. They will be designing the layout and infrastructure, deciding which plants to plant, and, when the time comes, they will install the whole thing (with a little help from our wonderful staff)! We are excited to spend the rest of the winter planning, prepping, and looking forward to that first thaw.
Please follow along as we reveal more and share updates on our social media channels, here on our blog and in our newsletter. If you have a youth that you think would be interested in joining us on this or any of our other projects, or if you think this is the kind of event you would like to volunteer at, please reach out here on our website.
Photo of the rooftop garden atop the City of Chicago City Hall Building in downtown Chicago - taken from the City of Chicago website.
A crowd of people learning about rooftop gardening at Toronto Urban Growers - taken from their website (photo by Ivan Emke).
