Resilient Lawns Sub-Committee Home Base

Discussion
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This post serves as the home base for Resilient Lawn Sub-Committee meetings, conversations, and notes. It has been turned into a wiki so any member with a log-in to the site can edit and organize this post.

Current Sub-Committee Members: @Nic_McPhee, @cberthiaume, @syd, @mgm

Google Folder Link: Resilient Lawns - Google Drive

Upcoming Meetings:

Past Meetings:

To Do:

  • Finalize Resilient Lawns One Pager - anyone is welcome to edit & suggest here
  • Resilient Lawn/Rain Gardens Map
  • Expanding Conversation
    • Reach out to PDT Garden Club to ask if we could crash their meeting to chat about Resilient Lawns
    • Consider reaching out to Park Board in the future

Links & Resources:

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Meeting Notes: February 17th @ 10:30AM

Community Check-ins

Syd shared some context and history of the Resilient Lawns Work

New Conversation:

  • Cameron was thinking with Griffin about applying to the Lawns to Legumes program to establish an example plot.
  • Instead of creating an example plot, can we collect examples that already exist in our community? Could we create a “Resilient Lawns Walking Tour” of Morris.
  • Sharing the Lawns to Legumes application is an immediate work we can do: https://bwsr.state.mn.us/l2l

One Pager:

  • Why would you want to have a Resilient Lawn?
    • wildlife, pollinators
    • reducing needs for chemicals (runoff, water quality)
    • lower maintenance
  • Where can I see examples?
    • Walking Tour of Resilient Lawns in Morris
    • Walking Tour of Rain Gardens in Morris
    • Public Rain Garden - Highland Drive (who put it there, how do they maintain it?)
    • Behind the Mall native plantings
    • UMN Morris Prairie Plantings
  • How to get started
    • Lawns to Legumes
    • SWCD Rain Gardens
    • Morning Sky Greenery
  • Cater to the wide array of folks - not just the ones who do the most lawn changes
    • If you want the lawn you have, how can you take care of it more resiliently
    • How can we frame resilient lawns in a way that does not make big ag think we are upset with them?
      • “we want pollinators because we are an agricultural area, have resilient lawns to help support farmers”
  • Nic & Sue could apply to Lawns to Leguemes as an example lawn
    • WCMNCN friends help plant it
    • Good visual & story
    • “Community barn raising, but for lawns. :-)” Nic

How can we continue this conversation once we create the one pager?

  • Park Board
  • Put up signs in yard
  • Normalizing the behavior
  • Reach out to folks with these types of lawns (we <3 your lawn list)
  • Master Gardeners - garden tour
  • Pomme De Terre Garden Club
  • Vicky Dosdall
  • Sue Granger
  • Seed collection events, USFWS events
  • Bee house making

Next Steps:

  • One Pager (syd)
  • Resilient Lawn/Rain Gardens Map
  • Expanding Conversation

To Do:

  • Cameron
    • Talk to Sue about the Mall
    • Talk to Public Works about Highland Drive
  • Syd
    • Draft up one pager
    • Create a list: Sally Finzel can give us names
    • Garden Club reach out and ask if they have a meeting with no agenda that we could crash and chat about lawn stuff
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Meeting Notes: March 17th @ 10:30AM

Community Checkins

  • @syd has been thinking about the 10 Principles of Disability Justice and the book Crip Kinship.
  • Crystal is thinking about being busy with work! Lots of connection and learning and goodness!
  • @briana_dokken is thinking about Math Nerd stuff!
  • @cberthiaume is thinking a lot about trees because they were at the Spring Expo for the Tree Board.
    • They are working on an updated “Trees You Should & Should Not Plant” list, they will share that once it’s done!
    • Crystal shared the Moorhead forestry page: City of Moorhead : Forestry

One Pager Draft
all friends welcome to edit and suggest things on this document

  • What is the purpose? What are we doing with this?
    • Using it as an intro and welcome into the conversation for folks who ARE and ARE NOT YET interested in transitioning into/learning about resilient lawns
    • Resilient Lawn & Tree Meeting - Welcoming community members to having a conversation about resilient lawns in our community.
      • What questions do we want answered at this meeting?
      • What experts do we want to come share?
      • What community education should happen here? (dispel no mow may, share about tree pruning)
  • More pictures in the one-pager!
  • We should create a digital “one-pager extended” with more resources for folks who want to learn more
    • funding opportunities
    • grasses & plants
  • Make sure to mention that you don’t have to replace your whole lawns! This is a gradient

Local Resilient Lawn List - Keep adding to this list!!

Other Notes & Chats:

  • Cameron - Research on City Center Mall & Highland Dr.
    • City Center Mall Native Plantings was a project with the MN Design Team
    • 18 Highland Drive rain garden put in by SWCD. From Matt Solemsass: “We installed the rain garden on Highland Dr. I actually used to live right across the street from it and have a raingarden in the yard there as well. The city staff would never do any maintenance on it so the neighborhood would do any maintenance that was needed. We have probably built 60 or more rain gardens in the city and surrounding county in the last 10 years. We offer cost-share to homeowners for doing these and generally do anywhere from 2-6 a season. We already have a well established program in place.”
  • WCMNCN at booth things and farmers market things!
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Meeting Notes: April 20th @ 10:30AM

Community Checkins
@Syd is planning for her MCAP award ceremony, is excited to trick all the business boys into having a party in her yard.
@cberthiaume is battling the dryer in their apartment building because it toasts the heck out of their clothes.

Cameron and Syd hopped on the Zoom this morning and had a good chat about what our next steps should be. We think that Resilient Lawn’s next steps involve inviting a group of wider experts to share with us some of their experience and knowledge before we step out into wider community education. We thought our idea was pretty good, so it’s what we planned for!

Here is the list of groups we brainstormed to invite to a meeting:
PDT Garden Club - Syd
Resilient Lawns List Folks - Syd
Morning Sky Greenery - Syd
Stevens County Master Gardeners - Cameron
City of Morris Tree Board - Cameron
Stevens County SWCD - Cameron

We are planning to have this Resilient Lawn & Tree Care Experts Meeting on Friday, May 24th at 10:30AM online at bit.ly/climate-network.

Cameron and Syd are each going to reach out to the groups and introduce them to this idea/this meeting. If we hear back with interest we will then invite them to the google calendar invite that you all have been invited to already.

Here are the details we typed up in the google calendar description that can help guide some of our introduction/invitation emails:

The West Central MN Climate Network (WCMNCN) is a group of neighbors putting people power and motivation behind supporting our community’s resiliency efforts. We would love to do that with YOU and your organization!
Recently, the WCMNCN has been hosting conversation, brainstorming, and planning to increase education and implementation of resilient lawn and tree care in the City of Morris.
We would love to expand our conversation with more local experts in order to effectively promote, implement, and educate the public about the importance & necessity of this work! We would like to hear from you before we do any of this community engagement or education.
So what are we asking from you? We would love it if you could join us at a zoom meeting (tentatively scheduled for Friday May 24th at 10:30AM) to share your expertise! We want to hear about past resilient lawn and tree care projects you have participated in, we want to promote the services and knowledge of our local organizations, and we want to hear your goals and ideas for resilient lawn and tree care in our community.
To read past notes on WCMNCN Resilient Lawns conversations: https://westcentralmnclimate.network/t/resilient-lawns-sub-committee-home-base/260
With questions or concerns, email Syd (syd.r.bauer@gmail.com) or Cameron (cameron.berthiaume@ci.morris.mn.us@gmail.com).

If you have other ideas of experts we should be inviting to this conversation, please let us know!

When we send our invitation emails, and if you send out any invitation emails, make sure to cc the Resilient Lawns Sub-Committee: mcphee@morris.umn.edu, midd1cry@gmail.com, dokke083@morris.umn.edu, syd.r.bauer@gmail.com, gjerness@gmail.com, cameron.berthiaume.ci.morris.mn.us@gmail.com

I will work more on the Resilient Lawns One-Pager before the Experts meeting, and you should get an email from Cameron about Tree ID training and volunteering to identify the trees in Morris.

These are our plans for Resilient Lawn work until the next WCMNCN meeting on May 4th at 10:30AM online at bit.ly/climate-network.

We would love to hear anyone’s thoughts and ideas about this! Shoutout to Cameron for being motivated, willing, and practical about next steps and how we can all put in work to make them happen! Thanks Cameron!