On December 1, 2024, we wrapped up our community projects for 2024 with a seed starting party. Despite the extreme cold (high temp of 18 degrees), we had 14 hearty souls join us to moisten potting soil, fill our new reuseable “conetainers,” and start about 30 species of native seeds that will become plants for CPP gardens in 2025. We also sent people home with seeds, soil, chicken wire cages for the native trees and shrubs we supplied this year, and beautiful CPP lawn signs designed by Charlie Zieke with logo by Sophie Strosberg. (Get in touch if you live in Corcoran neighborhood and need one for your CPP garden!) Many thanks to the Hennepin County Good Stewards grant, which enabled all of our purchases and workshops this year!
A few more photos from our seed starting day:
And other highlights from this year:
1. On September 28 and October 5, we planted four boulevard gardens (CPP gardens #38, 39, 40, and 41) for Corcoran neighbors Aerin, Roula, Andrea, and Matt. We used plants from the CPP nursery as well as some species from Minnesota Native Landscapes. About 30 friends and neighbors helped install the gardens. After the planting effort, we invited neighbors to come choose leftover plants from the nursery for their own gardens. We planted and distributed about 3,000 plants comprising 50 species.
2. In September we hosted a seed collecting workshop. We collected about 20 species of seeds from mature CPP gardens planted over the last 8 years. We used many of the seeds at our seed starting day.
3. In August, we distributed 38 native and near native trees, shrubs, and vines to Corcoran residents. We wanted to include native trees and shrubs as part of our offerings because they’re a great way of adding lots of pollinator habitat and nutrition without the labor involved in starting an entire garden of herbaceous plants, and because many trees and shrubs provide critical early-season pollinator resources for queen bumble bees. (For more on this topic, see this article by CPP friend and native bee taxonomist Zach Portman). This year, we distributed 12 species including elderberry, hazelnut, prairie rose, shrubby St. Johnswort, spikenard, wild plum, wild yam, Illinois bundleflower, nannyberry, halberd leaved rosemallow, red osier dogwood, and American bittersweet.
4. On August 11, we called on Charlie yet again to lead an irrigation workshop. We set up automatic irrigation for the CPP nursery and learned irrigation skills that any of us can apply to backyard gardens or nurseries.
5. In July, we hosted Metro Blooms lead designer Jen Ehlert to lead a garden design workshop that informed our garden installation at one of our garden recipient sites. We learned about species selection, plant spacing, site preparation, stormwater considerations, and how to take soil and light conditions into account when creating a pollinator garden.
And that catches us up to the last blog post. Thank you so much to everyone who helped us make urban pollinator habitat this year. Extra gratitude goes to Casey, who hosted every event and the new CPP nursery while creating a new human, Charlie, who helped us do all the things that we didn’t know how to do, Anne and Kim, who’ve been integral to CPP since the beginning and generally keep the neighborhood together, and Hennepin County for supporting this work.
Looking forward to the planting adventures of 2025!
Corcoran Pollinator Project 