Hello! My front yard is a mess & I’d love to turn it into a low maintenance, native, pollinator friendly habitat. Is anyone aware of services in the Twin Cities area that can help with this? Your recommendations are much appreciated!
A good, simple place to start would be with your local Agricultural Extension Service. They probably have info on pollinator gardens (like educational documents) or maybe some classes on things like native plants available. They may also have a local agent who can give you advice or do things like make a site visit and help you ID trees or test your soil.
And native plant society
In the Twin Cities, Blue thumb is a place to start for pollinator conversion for lawns: https://bluethumb.org/
Apropos of this, they just launched Lawns to Legumes: Habitat at Home, “a free, guided program designed to help Minnesotans continue creating, expanding, and caring for pollinator-friendly spaces…a five-month, do-it-together program designed to support you through every stage of a pollinator habitat project. Whether you’re starting from scratch, adding to an existing garden, or maintaining a mature planting, you’ll receive guidance, resources, and encouragement to help your habitat thrive.”
Welcome, @bosephsmom!
Quick question: Minneapolis or St. Paul? You’ve got slightly different microclimates depending on side of and / or proximity to the river. (Seriously, I thought that the Denver area had some wild variation, but we don’t have prairie, montane, and riprarian biomes all within the same city!) All that being said, I found a couple of other sources who can help point you in the right direction.
@m_whitson mentioned the local Ag Extension. Here’s their site:
UMN Extension: Native Plants
@egordon88 mentioned the local Native Plant Society. Here they are:
Wild Ones Twin Cities
(Check out their Resources page for places that you can go see native plants and concept gardens.)
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources: Landscaping with Natives
Here’s a link for South St. Paul’s City Government page on landscaping with native plants. St. Paul proper only seems to have a focus on rain gardens, but it might be useful as a jumping-off point.
Northern Natural Gardens is a residential landscape and gardening company, but they have some interesting links on their Resources page.
Hope that this gives you some pointers. Welcome again!