Brook Gardens Won Awards for its Sustainability — Until the Landlords Destroyed it.

Metro Blooms spent eight years and over $200,000 creating rain gardens at a low-income apartment complex. Then the property managers wiped it out in a month.

In 2019, Brook Gardens apartments received hundreds of thousands of dollars to construct expansive rain gardens, improving sustainability and connecting residents with nature.

Six years later, the gardens are already nearly gone.

Michelle Hobin, a long-time Brook Gardens resident, was one of the project’s caretakers from the very beginning. She tended hundreds of native plants that helped collect runoff. She led community events every year to get apartment residents excited about the outdoors. She became a trusted figure for residents of the 60-unit apartment complex in Brooklyn Park.

“Every kid out here calls me Auntie Michelle,” Hobin said. “And they know that I care.”

Yet as the complex cycled through new managers every few years, the landlords showed less and less care for the gardens and continuously reduced funding, even though they signed an agreement to maintain the gardens for at least 10 years. Hobin and the other caretakers were stretched thin.

Then, in the fall of 2025, the property owners denied the gardens any maintenance funding for 2026 and the landcare team wiped all the gardens out without warning.

Shrubs were chopped down, native flowers were mowed to the ground and mulch was excavated. Hobin never received a word in advance.

“I've put my time, my heart, my soul and worked very hard on this,” Hobin said. “And there's no value to them.”

Upon searching for answers, Hobin only received a curt email from the property owner saying they had different priorities.

So, after 19 years at Brook Gardens, Hobin decided it was time to leave.

For Hobin, the destruction of the gardens is part of a bigger problem. She believes the landlords, like many corporations, only care about sustainability or community wellbeing when there is a profit to be made.

“They were happy when they were getting accolades,” Hobin said. “And they were happy to take the taxpayers’ money to boost up our rent and to benefit off of it.”

As soon as the benefits stopped rolling in, though, the property managers seemingly abandoned the project completely, making Hobin feel like her efforts were futile.

Where it started: Metro Blooms

Metro Blooms is a Twin Cities nonprofit dedicated to bringing healthier, cleaner outdoor spaces to communities facing environmental injustices.

Whether building rain gardens or pollinator gardens, hosting community tree planting events or leading sustainable landcare workshops, Metro Blooms works to help neighborhoods that historically had limited access to green space.

For years, Brook Gardens Apartments and Townhomes was one of Metro Blooms’ success stories. The complex offers low-income housing for some residents and is home to many families with children.

Metro Blooms identified a need in the community for a healthier environment that encouraged interacting with the outdoors. In 2019, they partnered with the property owner — the Boisclair Corporation, a Twin Cities housing development company — to create rain gardens and other sustainable outdoor infrastructure for residents as part of renovations across the entire complex.

Laura Scholl, the executive director of Metro Blooms, said the partnership between Metro Blooms and the Boisclair Corporation was very positive for many years.

“I feel like the property owners were really supportive of what the residents wanted to see and allowing them to guide the process,” Scholl said.

Metro Blooms strived to heavily involve the Brook Gardens community in their planning. A group of project stewards who lived in the apartments, including Hobin, led community engagement.

Hobin was not an avid gardener before getting involved in the project, but the work inspired her. She eventually took on a full-time job as an installation crew lead for Metro Blooms, helping out with many of their other projects around the metro area.

Funding for the project came from a variety of sources. Scholl said Hennepin County and the Shingle Creek Watershed District contributed a combined total of about $200,000. The project also received tens of thousands of additional funds from programs with the state, the city of Brooklyn Park and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

The Boisclair Corporation also contributed $25,000 and built a nature playground: a unique, rustic space featuring a fort built of logs, tree stumps arranged in rows for climbing and other playground equipment.

The playground aimed to help kids start caring about nature from an early age, making it just one way the project achieved one of its core goals: community engagement.

The project stewards also held several community events every year to teach residents about the gardens and encourage them to help with maintenance. During summers, Hobin spent many hours outside taking care of the gardens, and local children often helped her out.

“I would bring bags out like every week and be like, ‘Come on, let's clean up all the trash. We’ve got to care about where we live. We’ve got to care about our gardens,’” Hobin said. “And they’re like, ‘I want to be a gardener when I grow up.’”

Eleven rain gardens with pollinator-friendly plants were the project highlights. The gardens created a beautiful landscape from formerly flat, barren lawns. Additionally, they helped filter water runoff from the entire apartment complex.

When rain falls on buildings, parking lots or human infrastructure, it can collect pollutants and debris. Plants and rain gardens help slow the flow of runoff and filter pollutants out. Brook Gardens is located directly next to a creek, so the rain gardens were especially helpful to ensure rainwater flowing into the watershed was relatively clean.

“They’re a clean water practice and create pollinator habitat through native plants,” Scholl said.

Scholl said the gardens absorbed about 2 million gallons of water every year to help filter out phosphorus and other pollutants that can create harmful algae blooms when too much seeps into streams or lakes. The gardens also created over 10,000 square feet of habitat for pollinators and animals.

The Boisclair Corporation’s website still features a video showing the process of building the sustainable rain gardens. The project’s success helped boost its public image.

Today, the gardens shown in the video are all gone.

I reached out to the Boisclair Corporation and the Brook Gardens property managers to ask for their perspective on the situation. I received no reply.

The end of an era

In early October, two weeks before the gardens were razed to the ground, Hobin crouched by a storm drain in one of the apartments’ parking lots, clearing a wad of leaves that helped water flow into one of the rain gardens.

Already, the garden was showing signs of neglect from management. The landcare team had spontaneously chopped half the plants down not long prior, telling Hobin it had been too overgrown. The garden bed was left with a gaping semicircular hole of dirt.

For Hobin, the action felt like an insult. The garden was overgrown because the property owners had not provided enough funding to maintain it.

Hobin said maintaining the gardens adequately every year would cost the property managers about $10,000 — a number that pales in comparison to the gardens’ original price tag.

“To me, $10,000 isn't a lot for a whole season to maintain them, as beautiful as they look and the way they change the community,” Hobin said. “You should want your community to work together and be happy about where they live.”

In 2025, Hobin said the property managers only provided enough funding for 40 total hours of garden maintenance across the entire year. Even after maintenance funding dried up, Hobin said she dedicated countless hours to the gardens without compensation.

It simply was not enough.

Loss of funding was not the only cause for the gardens’ destruction. Brook Garden also experiences an exceptionally high rate of staff turnover meaning managers and maintenance crew often did not understand the gardens’ importance.

“We work with some other property developers and owners where we don't see the same level of turnover in their staff,” Scholl said.

Hobin knew she needed to do something to save the remaining healthy gardens and protect their future. She approached the property manager and asked to meet so they could discuss what needed to be done.

The manager said she would, but the meeting never happened. All of Hobin’s attempts at communication went without replies.

“There's been days where I've had to take off work to go meet with them,” Hobin said. “They don't show up. They don't come in.”

Then, after just two weeks, the landcare company wiped the rest of the gardens out. Hobin never received a word in advance.

“They said they have other commitments and they will not be able to afford maintenance at all next year,” Hobin said.

For Hobin, it felt like a spiteful response to her pleas for more resources and funding.

“If they don't have somebody doing it for free, they don't want it done,” Hobin said. “Or they will call the lawn care company and tell them to cut it all down.”

I visited Brook Gardens for the first time in October, when the rain gardens were lush and bright — a remarkable sliver of nature at an otherwise ordinary suburban apartment complex.

When I returned only a month later, all the plants and mulch were gone, replaced with a rough layer of dirt. Hobin walked directly across the scarred ground, mourning the loss of her hard work. Weeds were already beginning to sprout through the soil.

Life now at Brook Gardens

Erin Kubitz, who has lived in Brook Gardens for 23 years, worked alongside Hobin as a project steward ever since it began. Unlike Hobin, Kubitz was a gardener long before getting involved with Metro Blooms.

After the gardens were razed, Kubitz is one of the few people who still makes an effort to care for them.

“I'm the only one that still maintains a garden outside my house, even though it's dead,” Kubitz said.

Kubitz has some sympathy for the property managers — the job is difficult and she believes they are not paid enough. Resident demands can be overwhelming, and upper management does not provide enough support.

Kubitz said many of Brook Gardens’ residents are single mothers who are incredibly grateful for the low-income housing offered at the apartments. Without Brook Gardens, they would likely be much worse off — if they had a home at all.

Yet the lack of assistance from the property managers frustrates her. Often, it feels like they are not incentivized to care about their residents because they have no other place to be.

“It would be a great place to raise a family if we had support,” Kubitz said.

Even before the gardens were destroyed, Hobin said she often felt like the managers were ignoring her.

Hobin brought me inside her apartment to show me mold growing on her bathroom ceiling. Above the bathtub, the ceiling plaster was peeling, coated in dark black spots. Hobin said she told the property managers about the issue six months ago and it still wasn’t fixed.

“I can’t have my family live like this,” Hobin said.

Even as tension with the landlords became unbearable, Hobin said it took her a long time to finally give up on the community she had dedicated herself to for so long.

“It's just so frustrating because I do love it, I care and want to do it,” Hobin said. “But where do I draw the line?”

The loss of the gardens was Hobin’s last straw that sparked her to move out. She could hardly bear to look towards any of the gardens while walking up to her front door. But the property managers’ apparent lack of any care disturbed her the most.

“If you don't care, how do you expect the people that live here to care and the kids to care?” Hobin said. “It spreads like a virus.”

What happens next?

As Hobin stacked boxes in her living room, preparing to leave Brook Gardens once and for all, it was tough to imagine any way the gardens could ever be fully restored.

Hobin wants the property managers to be held accountable for their negligence. She also believes more safeguards are necessary so other sustainability projects do not meet the same fate.

Metro Blooms is determined to ensure the Boisclair Corporation remains true to their commitments from the beginning of the project. Scholl said the corporation signed an agreement to maintain the project for at least 10 years when they accepted funding from local governments, which is typical of similar projects. So far, only six years have passed.

However, Scholl said local governments take few measures to ensure landlords comply with these agreements, so Metro Blooms is currently exploring methods to do so. Scholl said she is still in communication with the property managers to explore solutions.

Unless the Boisclair Corporation provides maintenance funding, though, it will be difficult to bring the gardens back.

Going forward, Scholl said Metro Blooms aims to create tighter maintenance agreements for future projects so they do not fall apart.

“One thing we've started trying to do is have property managers not only sign an agreement that they will maintain the project, they will set aside X amount of funding per year for maintenance,” Scholl said.

Scholl said that a fundamental misalignment in values often exists between Metro Blooms and property management companies, making collaboration difficult. The landlords’ ultimate goal is to turn a profit, which often conflicts with Metro Bloom’s community-centered approach.

For Hobin, the problem goes beyond Brook Gardens. She wants to see landlords be incentivized to do good for their communities rather than just turn a profit.

“I don’t think it takes a genius,” Hobin said. “You don’t need to be educated. It’s common decency.”

Especially at low-income housing complexes, it often feels like the system is designed without residents in mind.

“Everybody wants to live humanely and feel happy and good about where they live,” Hobin said. “I think that it's very simple.”

Page updated

Google Sites