With signs of spring settling in and Earth Day on April 22, residents will soon be refreshing their flower beds, awaiting new growth and blooms along their neighborhood streets.
But over at Webster School, numerous flower beds represent a symbol of how renewable energy, sustainability and gardening can come together as one.
“You need to have the willingness to make it happen,” Chris Burda of the Minnesota Renewable Energy Society (MRES), said of the project. “It’s so important … the integration of native plants in the urban environment.”
Burda explained that the MRES hosts a display in and around the Eco-Experience Building at the State Fair every year. Burda is the Eco-Experience Coordinator for MRES. One of the displays last summer was a full-size solar panel with native perennials planted underneath to show how flowers for pollinators, food, crops and more can grow underneath large solar farms.
The concept is known among renewable energy professionals and farmers alike as agrivoltaics. This is where, among other agricultural activities, rows of solar arrays can cover farm fields to generate power while also acting as shade for livestock, and certain crops can thrive beneath or alongside the solar panels.
Burda explained the science further, saying native plants grow a network of deep roots that hold water, air and carbon in the soil while under the solar panels.
“I just think it’s a beautiful thing — it comes together as an integrated system,” Burda said.
Part of the integrated system in this case included MRES volunteer Marty Lewis-Hunstiger, who lived in Northeast for 40 years. That’s because, according to Burda, Lewis-Hunstiger found a home for the native perennials at Webster School in Northeast where students were making a butterfly garden.
Lewis-Hunstiger said that at the conclusion of the 2025 State Fair, she called Webster School to see if they could use the plants. The school’s principal welcomed the idea. Two round beds, which included coneflowers and cardinal flowers, among other plantings, were then planted by a neighborhood Master Gardener. Some of the plants are expected to come up by peak season.
Plants growing in the shade of this solar panel set up outside of the Eco Experience building on the Minnesota State Fair’s grounds last summer. Some of the native perennials were moved to beds at Webster Elementrary by a master gardener following the 2025 State Fair. (Minnesota Renewable Energy Society)
Both Burda and Lewis-Hunstiger said this also shows how renewable energy projects, even those on a smaller scale with the purposes of education, can bring together community members and small businesses.
Landscape Alternatives, a plant nursery based in Shafer, provided the plants; solarpanel manufacturer Heliene from Rogers provided the panel for the exhibit and the American Solar Grazers Association partnered with MRES to introduce Eco-Experience visitors to the growing interdependence between the solar industry and agriculture.
“Our mission as an organization is to inspire folks to learn about solar energy and all renewables as well as energy efficiency and storage — all the related technologies in order to spur a more sustainable society and a renewable energy economy for all,” Burda said.
According to Environment Minnesota’s Research & Policy Center, the state produces nearly 100 times as much electricity from solar as it did a decade ago, though the state still ranks 20th in the nation for growth in total solar power generation since 2015.
When it comes to agrivoltaics specifically, Clean Energy Economy Minnesota reports that there are several projects across the state, all of which involve pollinator habitats, grazing or a mix of the two. Most existing pollinator-friendly agrivoltaic systems in Minnesota are located in the southern half of the state, according to the group.
As for MRES, Burda says they’ve once again been invited to exhibit at the Eco-Experience at the State Fair, which will run from August 27 to Labor Day. For more information on how to volunteer with the organization, you can visit their website at https://www.mnrenewables.org/volunteer.