Bio
In my work as a greening and gardening educator and organizer for the past 20 years, I have focused on facilitating connections between people and plants in community settings. These projects have culminated in opening new community gardens, activating community festivals, creating gardening workshops, fostering neighborhood identity, facilitating community building, elevating food access, nurturing cross-cultural learning, and establishing native plant oases. The Minneapolis and St Paul communities I have had the pleasure to working with include the Como (St Paul), Hamline-Midway, Frogtown, Rondo, SE Como (Minneapolis), and nearby communities. In the most recent years this work has taken me from urban farms, to backyards of Frogtown/Rondo community members enrolled in a prescription gardening program, to a Midway prairie restoration plots, to neighborhood festivals, and finally to St Paul Park and Recreation afterschool Rec Check program. While not all of the related work has had a creative aspect to it, the projects that stimulated community creativity, added elements of neighborhood placemaking, or simultaneously bring beauty alongside nature are the ones that bring me the most satisfaction as they straddle both creative and scientific exploration.