In 'turf-loving' Twin Cities suburbs, a push to help the state bee reshapes landscapes

Take a map of Woodbury and look at the open spaces to the east and south: That's where development will rapidly change the landscape of one of the state's fastest-growing cities over the next few years.

Now take a map of likely Minnesota habitat for the endangered rusty patched bumblebee, and the similarity between the two maps makes it clear: Those new homes will be built in areas that are in, near and adjacent to habitat for the critically endangered state bee.

Habitat destruction is one of the reasons the rusty patched bumblebee no longer ranges across the United States in the numbers it once did. Some 165 of the bees were spotted in Minnesota in 2018, according to the University of Minnesota Department of Entomology. That year, just 471 were seen anywhere in the world.

"We're lucky here in the Twin Cities that this is one of the places where we still have them," said Elaine Evans, an extension educator with the University of Minnesota.

Whether or not the bee survives will depend in part on its habitat, and on that score, there's been rising awareness that the state bee needs help.

The city of Woodbury in recent years has made native landscaping and pollinator gardens more intentional in some of the city's 500 stormwater basins. The homeowners associations that rule many of Woodbury's residential developments, dictating everything from front door colors to permitted landscaping, have become more lenient. The just-built Westwind New Home Community has in its recorded covenant a stipulation that allows homeowners to use native plantings and shrubs.

The Legislature weighed in last year with a new law saying cities cannot ban pollinator gardens or native plantings in front yards, opening a path for those who want to create a bee-friendly spot. The conflict got widespread attention after the city of Falcon Heights sent a violation letter to a man who planted vegetables in his front yard.

Still, turf grass is king across Twin Cities suburbs, and planting something different can mean staring down social stigma, neighbor's complaints or even online ridicule.

"It's an issue that we're really concerned about, and it's also one that I don't feel we're making a lot of good headway, to be honest," said Angie Hong, water education senior specialist for the Washington County Conservation District.

The bee's endangered status brings some protection, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says bee nests are very hard to see: the rusty patched bumblebee lives in the ground, entering its hive through a small hole in the dirt. The agency gets just a few reports each year of rusty patched bumblebee nests for the entire country. One of the two nests found this year was in Minnesota, about three hours south of Minneapolis.

So even if Woodbury city staff scour a parcel for evidence of endangered species before the bulldozers move in, it's unlikely they'd spot a bee colony, even if one were present. Once a colony is dug up, its reproduction cycle is broken and all of the bees will die, Evans said.

'Turf-dominant suburb'

Woodbury resident Dana Boyle loves her house in the Evergreen development but was never a fan of the non-native Kentucky blue grass filling all the front yards.

"A lovely but turf-dominant suburb," she calls her city.

Some of those homes use chemicals to keep the grass green, and whenever the chemical company truck came through the neighborhood to spray, Boyle knew, even if she didn't see it. She said she could taste it in the air.

After earning her Minnesota Master Naturalist certificate from the University of Minnesota extension service, Boyle made a presentation to her homeowners association about converting her lawn to something else — and won approval.

Boyle made sure that the transition would be gradual, and that it would look intentional and not like someone had simply let the lawn go feral. She used a stone retaining wall and a stone path through the clusters of native plantings. She got a grant and lots of education from Lawns to Legumes, a state program administered by the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources.

She eventually had workers tear out the sod and replace it with 1,200 plugs of Pennsylvania sedge, a native plant that grows to six to eight inches tall. In the first year of the transition, before the plants could fill in the space, some neighbors noticed, Boyle said.

"We're Minnesota, so no one complained to me, but they did complain to the HOA," Boyle said. The garden is in its fourth year and now brings compliments. Boyle can point to hummingbirds and bees and flowers, and passersby sometimes stop to take it in.

When visitors ask her for advice, Boyle sends them to Metro Blooms, a Minneapolis nonprofit that helps communities create healthier landscapes. There's some cost to a project like Boyle's, but the larger barrier was the social stigma.

"This is a cultural shift which is much harder to make than a decree or policy kinds of stuff," said Boyle.

Landscaping vs. erosion

Hong has pitched an idea to developers to allow homeowners to choose their landscaping, much the same way they might choose the home's paint color or countertops, and to give them the option of planting native grasses and pollinator gardens. If someone just bought a new house that came with sod and in-ground irrigation, "it's asking a lot of the homeowner to rip that all out and do something different," Hong said.

She tried the state Builders Association, and then local cities and watershed districts, but the talks weren't productive. For now, she keeps lobbying for the idea when she can.

The counterargument is that most builders choose sod for new houses because of state and federal rules about stormwater and erosion control, said Nick Erickson, the senior director of housing policy for Housing First Minnesota, the state trade association for builders.

Homebuilders are responsible for erosion on a new homesite, and the fastest way to stabilize the project after the house is built is to lay down sod. Waiting for native grasses to fill in isn't practical, said Erickson.

"Thirty years ago, you could sell a house and leave it with untilled soil, but that's not allowed anymore," he said, noting a homebuilder who doesn't control the flow of water running off the building site could be fined. The need for native plantings might be acute, but so is the need for mitigating water pollution, Erickson said: "This is a situation where you're putting two interests against each other."

The future of the rusty patched bumblebee hasn't been written yet, and experts say it's hard to know what will happen as habitat losses continue.

Evans, one of the co-authors of the petition that got the bee listed as an endangered species, said she swings between despair and hope when she thinks about the bee's future. A homeowner who installs bee-friendly gardens will see an immediate effect as bees find the blooms, she said. Seeing how quickly a rusty patched bumblebees respond to a new habitat keeps her buoyant.

"They are around. … They're at lower numbers than they were before, but we're still at this opportunity to help them," she said. "We can have hope because they are here."