Hi, I'm Abby Moore from the Mississippi
Watershed Management Organization and
today we're here at the Minneapolis
Sculpture Garden.
The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is an
iconic location, located
right near Downtown Minneapolis, and it's
a unique partnership between the
Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board
and the Walker Art Center,
a great place where art and culture and
parks meet.
And so a lot of times people think about
the sculpture garden as this place where
all these great sculptures are.
There's a lot of other things going on
here too, and so today we're going to
show you some of the other things that
are going on here,
specifically having to do with water
quality protection
and habitat related to the nearby
Mississippi River.
In 2016 and 2017, the MWMO partnered with
the park board
and the Walker and other partners on a
reconstruction project of the
Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
And so today we're going to take you
through and show you some of the ways
that we helped make this place more
sustainable and resilient and beautiful
and a great place for people to enjoy
for a long time.
So after 25 years and millions of visitors 
the soils in this park had become
extremely compacted, which meant that
water wasn't able to soak into the soil,
the turf wasn't able to grow very well,
and it basically just created a mess.
So in order to address this problem, the
MWMO funded the replacement of the soils
in here with an engineered soil, and
basically that just means a specially
mixed soil
that can maintain its integrity and
structure and allow water to soak
in for a long period of time, even under
the stress of having lots of people
stepping on it.
In addition to those engineered soils,
there's also drains
that are installed throughout these turf
spaces
so that any excess water on the surface
or the soil is actually directed away
from the site, so over time
that should lead to a drier and more
sustainable area.
So one of the most exciting features
here at the sculpture garden is
something you can't even see.
Under my feet here, there's an 80,000
gallon cistern and that cistern is
basically just a giant tank that holds
water.
So i mentioned before the drains that
take water away from the
turf rooms and other parts of the
sculpture garden, and those drains
actually
send that excess water to these tanks.
The tanks also collect
the overflow from the Spoonbridge and
Cherry fountain, which is a very
famous sculpture here at the Minneapolis
Sculpture Garden,
and all of that overflow and runoff from
the adjacent rooms
is stored and then can be reused for
irrigating this entire site
as well as the baseball field adjacent.
One of the things that's really cool
about this, not only is that water able
to be recycled,
but it ultimately keeps about
4.7 million gallons
of runoff out of stormdrains, which
makes huge strides in protecting water
quality and habitat in the Mississippi River.
The final feature that i want to show
you today is the "fresh meadow."
This area is located on the north side
of the park and is actually the lowest
part of the park,
so naturally water runs in this
direction. So we decided to take
advantage of that
and plant deep-rooted native plants in
this area, so not only do the deep-rooted
native plants
have the ability to handle really damp
soils
but they also pull water down into the
soil
and they clean the water as it soaks in.
So that's a really great benefit for
water quality. In addition,
this native plant area provides great
habitat
for pollinators and other local urban
wildlife, so it's a great
example of a feature that includes
multiple benefits
in addition to just being beautiful to
look at and a really nice place to be.
Thank you for joining me today to learn
a little bit about what we're doing to
protect water quality and habitat here
at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
I encourage you to come out and explore
and see this place on your own time
and also learn more about this project
and other projects that we're doing at
our website,
and be sure to like share and subscribe.
