Blue Thumb Resilient Yards Spring Workshops: DIY yard tactics for taking climate change action

From Metro Blooms:

Registration is open for Blue Thumb’s Resilient Yards workshops to help home gardeners meet the challenges of climate change. These workshops, offered virtually, teach earth-friendly actions that mitigate the impacts of heatwaves, flooding rains, and habitat loss through rain gardens, native planting, and other do-it-yourself tactics. These actions are especially important in urban settings, where hard surfaces like roads and sidewalks absorb heat, causing heat islands, and send runoff into sewers that empty into and pollute our lakes and streams.

There are two main workshops: Resilient Yards and Pollinator Lawns (also called Turf Alternatives). For both, registrants will be encouraged to watch an online presentation before the workshop. This “homework” prepares participants to get the best from the virtual workshop with experts. Resilient Yards will cover resilience, site assessment, rain gardens, native planting, designing with trees and shrubs, turf alternatives, and other information for an eco-friendly yard. Pollinator Lawns/Turf Alternatives will focus on options to traditional turf lawns including flowering lawns that support pollinators and that require less watering and mowing.

Workshops cost $15 and will be offered throughout the spring starting March 29. Scholarships are available. More information and a schedule of workshops are available by visiting https://bluethumb.org/events/ or calling 651-699-2426.

Blue Thumb is coordinated by Metro Blooms, a nonprofit that partners with communities to create resilient landscapes and foster clean watersheds, embracing the values of equity and inclusion to solve environmental challenges.