Address: St. Paul, MN

What is Test Plot MN?

Test Plot MN began in spring 2023 as a 1,500-square-foot garden created by architecture students from the University of Minnesota. It's growing every year and will soon reach about 7,000 sq ft. The garden is located at Lexington Parkway and Pierce Butler Route in the Hamline Midway/Frogtown neighborhoods of St. Paul. Test Plot MN operates at the intersection of ecological stewardship, artistic practice, and public learning — functioning simultaneously as a working garden, community gathering space, and art education laboratory. It explores how gardens can serve as platforms for creativity, collaboration, and inquiry: spaces where learning emerges through participation, observation, and relationship with plant communities. A creative research site open to all!

What is the Bee Line?

The Bee Line is a two-mile span of Pierce Butler Route in St. Paul, connecting Hamline Midway and Frogtown. Along this corridor, public lands are being transformed from mowed, neglected turf into thriving pollinator habitat. Most of our plants are propagated by neighbors through winter seed-sowing workshops. The gardens are stewarded by a small collective of organizations managed by friends and neighbors  including Human Nature, the MN Seed Project, and Hamline Midway Coalition. We're deeply grateful for support from the City of St. Paul, Ramsey County, and for financial support from the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR), and the Capitol Region Watershed District (CRWD).

About Affiliate Test Plots:

Affiliate Test Plots are independently organized sites connected through a shared interest in experimental landcare, habitat restoration, stewardship, and public learning. Affiliates join the Test Plot network for knowledge exchange and mutual support, including the sharing of methods, observations, questions, and outcomes over time. Participation is lightweight and voluntary, and may include periodic updates, site visits, workshops, or other forms of exchange between projects. The network is not a formal program, but an evolving set of relationships between sites exploring how land can be collectively studied, tended, and learned from.

Affiliate Test Plots are not managed, funded or fiscally sponsored by Test Plot, and retain full autonomy over their design, governance, and implementation.  Affiliate sites do not represent Test Plot organizationally or legally.