How to throw a (Blue Thumb) spring party
Angie Hong
How to throw a (Blue Thumb) Spring Party
Around 7pm, neighbors started gathering at Connie Taillon’s house in the Legend’s neighborhood of Stillwater. The margaritas were blended and bowls of chips, dip and other snack foods lined the counter. After sharing the latest news from their end of the block, “You would not believe what the kids were fighting about this time…,” people began to find chairs and sat down to hear about the topic of the night.
So what was I there to sell them? Tupperware? Jewelry? Spa products? Actually, I was there to tell them about a new program called Blue Thumb – Planting for Clean Water and how it can help homeowners throughout the metro area to create beautiful landscaping for their homes that is low-maintenance, attracts birds and wildlife and benefits local water quality.
Let me give you a bit of background to explain. Connie is a board member of the Brown’s Creek Watershed District, the local government entity responsible for monitoring water quality and preventing flooding for the Brown’s Creek watershed, which covers north and west Stillwater, east Grant and a little bit of south Hugo and May Township. Two years ago, the watershed district began talking with people living near Long Lake in Stillwater about the quality of their lake and their vision for the area. The 2006 Long Lake Management Report detailed numerous ways to improve the ecological and aesthetic qualities of the lake, including stabilizing the shoreline with native plants to limit erosion and filter out pollutants, building raingardens in neighborhoods surrounding Long Lake to reduce pollution from run-off and planting native trees, flowers and grasses throughout the area to increase wildlife habitat and decrease water pollution from stormwater.
Brown’s Creek WD is so committed to improving water quality in Long Lake that that have chosen to allocate a large portion of their 2007 budget to educating local communities about the ways that they can help keep the lake clean and providing mini-grants to people living near the lake for native gardens, raingardens and shoreline planting projects.
Other local watersheds are using the Blue Thumb – Planting for Clean Water program to educate their communities about water pollution as well. Valley Branch Watershed District, which covers most of Lake Elmo, the northeast corner of Oakdale, the western half of Baytown and West Lakeland and the northern half of Afton, is developing its own cost-share assistance program to help people plant gardens that benefit water quality. The Middle St. Croix Watershed Management Organization, formed by the St. Croix communities from Stillwater Township down to St. Mary’s Point, and the South Washington Watershed District, which includes most of Woodbury and Cottage Grove as well as the Mississippi River communities of Newport, St. Paul Park and Grey Cloud, are both working with the Washington Conservation District to provide technical assistance for planting projects in their communities.
So how do you host your own Blue Thumb party? Well, just give me a call and we’ll see what we can do. If you’ve got a church group, a gardening club or a lake association, invite your members and we’ll talk about the best garden options for your group. If you prefer to host a gathering in your home, invite your neighbors and we’ll talk about planting possibilities for the whole block. Want to get started on your own? Visit www.BlueThumb.org and download a native plant brochure, a raingarden how-to manual or a shoreline planting guide. You can also contact me at (651) 275-1136 x. 35 or angie.hong@mnwcd.org.
Angie Hong is an educator with the East Metro Water Resource Education Program.
Posted: April 17, 2007