Recently, the Minnesota Legislature approved a third round of funding for the Lawns to Legumes Program, which was developed in 2019 to increase habitat for pollinators such as the federally endangered rusty-patched bumblebee. Minnesotans can apply for grants of up to $300 to support native planting projects, and there are larger grants for demonstration neighborhoods as well. Over the past two years, Lawns to Legumes grant recipients have created more than 800,000 square feet of pollinator habitat, including pocket plantings, pollinator lawns, and pollinator meadows / prairies.

Last week, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) released its draft list of impaired waters for 2022. The list catalogs lakes, rivers and streams in our state that are impacted by a wide variety of pollutants and stressors. Some no longer support the fish and insect species that they used to. Others are prone to frequent algae blooms due to too much nutrients in the water. Still others have fish consumption advisories due to high levels of mercury, PCBs or PFOS. In total, 2904 water bodies in Minnesota are considered impaired.

On Monday, November 8, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) released a draft list of lakes, rivers and streams to be added to the state’s impaired waters list in 2022. Included are six water bodies in Washington County that have recently been found to have high levels of perfluorinated alkylated substances (PFAS), also known as the “forever chemical.” The affected waters include Tanners Lake (Oakdale), Eagle Point wetland and H.J. Brown Pond (Lake Elmo Park Reserve), Clear Lake (City of Forest Lake) and the St. Croix River/Lake St. Croix from Taylors Falls to Prescott.

When Marge Sagstetter and her husband Steve moved to Oakdale after 25 years in Lake Elmo, they took more than just their interior furnishings with them. Marge, a Master Gardener, had spent years lovingly cultivating and tending to gardens at her old home and, though she looked forward to a smaller, lower maintenance yard in Oakdale, she just had to bring a few flowers and ornamental grasses along with them when they moved.

You might not expect to find an ecological wonder in the middle of Woodbury, but Tamarack Nature Preserve is not only the southernmost tamarack wetland in Minnesota, but also, it turns out, both a rich fen and a poor bog …

University of Minnesota and others are currently researching new technologies that could reduce our need for salt, including novel applications of porous pavement, nano-technology and solar roads that prevent ice from adhering to pavement, salt-free water softeners, and chemical alternatives to road salt. Meanwhile, here are two ways that you can help to reduce salt use this year:

In the fall, many communities deploy street sweepers to clean-up city streets. Though the phrase “street sweeping” may conjure up images of a people with brooms, industriously sweeping our roadways, many modern street sweepers actually suck, like vacuums. Street suckers to the rescue?

What if someone told you that you could skip raking your leaves this fall? It turns out that raking leaves off of your lawn can actually be counter-productive. “The leaves have organic matter in them,” explains Sam Bauer, Executive Director of the North Central Turfgrass Association. “You’re adding good organic matter to your soil when you’re not picking them up.” Instead of raking…

Take a virtual tour of some of our current partner-led efforts to protect and restore water resources in the Lower St. Croix Watershed. This tour showcases a variety of different types and scales of conservation practices, including: small-scale residential; large-scale agricultural; urban stormwater retrofits; and “capstone” projects that put water monitoring and pollution-reduction modeling into practice.

Over the past twenty years, City of Stillwater, the MSCWMO, community volunteers, and local government partners have implemented dozens of lake-improvement projects to benefit Lily Lake. Projects have included stabilizing eroding gullies, redesigning the city-owned boat launch with porous pavers and native plants along the shoreline, installing raingardens in surrounding neighborhoods, retrofitting parking lots and stormwater ponds in commercial areas, and engaging community residents to adopt storm drains through the Adopt-a-Drain program.

There are several steps you can take to prep your yard and gardens for winter and continue to support pollinators, birds and other wildlife:

The Mill Stream originates in William O’Brien State Park and flows downhill, across Hwy 95, and through the Brookside, before cascading down a waterfall to the St. Croix River.

We’ve scrambled over the hills, through the woods, and into a giant field of radish and turnip greens where Isanti County landowner Dave Medvecky is leading us deeper in to view a wetland restoration currently underway. It feels more or less like we’re walking through a giant bowl of salad.

During a recent field day for cities and water professionals, University experts talked about some of the best strategies they’ve found for reducing the environmental impact of our traditional American lawn.

Bee-friendly lawns feature a mix of drought-tolerant fine fescue grasses and low-growing flowers such as Dutch white clover, creeping thyme, and self heal.