Living Lab Update: Community Connections Garden

The Community Connections Garden next to Skok Hall on the St. Paul campus provides a serene pocket of nature for students and faculty to relax and enjoy the outdoors. The Living Lab experience has been a rewarding one for any student or faculty that has participated, so let's check in with Kelly Nail, a Conservation Biology Graduate Student, on the status of her project.

Kelly Nail - Community Connections Garden

How does your Living Lab relate to sustainability?

Our pollinator garden shows that areas on campus can not only be beautiful, but also sustain populations of native plants and pollinators and facilitate informal education of those on campus. Additionally, while there is some work that must be done to maintain this beautiful and educational space, a majority of the work occurred at the outset, making this a very sustainable garden.

How has your Living Lab changed since its beginning? What has been successful/unsuccessful?

Last year, our garden was just getting off the ground and didn't have a chance to bloom to it's full potential. This year, the garden has really taken hold and at any given time has many different flowers in bloom and many different pollinators present. As far as surprises, I don't think we anticipated quite how popular a gathering spot this would be!

What advice would you give to someone wanting to start a Living Lab?

The best advice I can give is to be ambitious and to form partnerships to make it sustainable. The Monarch Lab worked hard to design this garden, with our own Wendy Caldwell and Karen Oberhauser partnering with master gardeners to successfully design the garden, partnering with facilities to successfully start up the garden, and with people in the Monarch Lab to help maintain the garden.

What has been the most rewarding part about the Living Lab program?

The most rewarding thing about our Living Lab garden for me has been to see it being so fully used, not just by pollinators, but by the whole spectrum of university staff, students, and visitors. Seeing this garden used as both a gathering space, a place to relax and communicate, and a place to learn about native plants and pollinators has been extremely rewarding. Also, the proliferation of butterflies, bees, and other insects now present daily in the garden has been so fulfilling to see!