Community Engagement

Where Habitats Thrive, Communities Thrive

A healthy community is rooted in a healthy environment. We partner with groups across the Great Lakes to create resilient, beautiful green spaces that solve local problems and bring people together.

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Rooted in Equity and Partnerships

Lasting change starts with listening. We know that the best solutions emerge from the community itself. With that in mind, we build more than just rain gardens. We build partnerships for healthier, greener neighborhoods.

Our work is guided by core principles

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Equity and Justice
We focus support on communities most affected by flooding, pollution, and a lack of green space, working to ensure everyone has the safe, beautiful environment they deserve.

Community Led Action
Their vision drives our work. We provide funding, expertise, and hands to help you transform underused spaces into community assets.

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Long-term Resilience
We build deep, lasting relationships and networks for communities to support each other, self-sustaining the people and habitats that grow stronger and deeper roots over.

Growth & Impact

Since launching Sacred Grounds in Toledo in 2017, our programming has expanded to Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Cleveland, growing a regional network of 120+ community organizations. We partner with local leaders to provide place-based technical, financial, and educational support, activating green spaces through:

People working together to plant a garden

NATIVE PLANT GARDENS & WILDLIFE HABITATS AT COMMUNITY ANCHORS

GREEN STORMWATER INFRASTRUCTURE (GSI) FOR FLOOD PREVENTION

People sitting in folding chairs at community workshop

WORKSHOPS & EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE STEWARDSHIP

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CAPACITY BUILDING & TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE FOR LONG-TERM RESILIENCE

GARDEN TOURS SHOWCASING COMMUNITY-LED GREEN SPACES

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PARTNERSHIPS STRENGTHENING ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CONNECTIONS

Contact

Tiffany Jones
Great Lakes Director, Community Engagement
JonesT@nwf.org

Community Snapshots

A long standing Sacred Grounds partner since 2018, St. Suzanne Cody Rouge Resource Center continues to grow as a community resilience hub. This rain garden installation - completed by Detroit Stormwater Specialist trainees - strengthens the site’s commitment to stormwater solutions, habitat restoration, and environmental education for neighborhood youth and community members.
At Clark Park in Southwest Detroit, community members gathered for the annual Bringing Nature Home workshop, neighborhood garden tour, and native plant giveaway in partnership with Keep Growing Detroit. More than 400 native plant plugs were distributed to residents, expanding habitat across the city while supporting a neighborhood facing some of Detroit's highest environmental justice and air quality challenges.
The Sacred Grounds - Healing over Habitat Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) Detroit program hosted two kick off orientations that brought together more than 25 faith and community leaders ready to learn more about how to address local flooding, create GSI/rain gardens, increase access to nature, and promote long term site stewardship in their communities. Together these 10 sites will contribute to 12,600 sqft of green stormwater infrastructure and will capture approximately 823,000 gallons of stormwater.
At the Thomas M. Wernet Center, a Sacred Grounds Toledo rain garden installation showcases how beauty and resilience can grow side by side. A large group of community members and youth helped shape the design and installation process, creating a welcoming community space that manages stormwater and attracts local pollinators in an underserved Toledo neighborhood.
In 2025, the Sacred Grounds Toledo Program alongside Toledo Lucas County Rain Garden Initiative (RGI) hosted a series of 4 Pop-Up Rain Garden Tours across the city of Toledo. The tour facilitated education, shared learning, a few native plant giveaways, and local storytelling on the hows and whys of including native plants in landscaping, especially with the potential to improve water quality and capture stormwater.
Bringing Nature Home participants pose with their curated plant kit following an informational presentation on the basics of native plant gardening. They, along with 38 additional participants, are going home with 10 native plants to start residential gardens!
Masjid Bilal used native trees and flowering native plants to beautify all four sides of their mosque. Masjid Bilal, Sacred Grounds Cleveland participant was awarded "House of Worship of the Year" from partner Cuyahoga Soil & Water Conservation District for their outstanding conservation work to transform their land into beautiful wildlife habitat.
Scranton Road Bible Church volunteers on planting day! "The big picture is that I want us to do better as a church, in terms of the way we care about the creation that's around us... I'm definitely not an expert at this, but if we can do better, I want to do better," explained Pastor Mark (pictured in the center). "My hope is that we can make easy first strides… use our space better, more efficiently and productively, other than being just a flat piece of greenspace."
Bringing Nature Home participants in Grand Rapids pose with their native plant kits they took home to start their own native plant gardens. These participants attended a workshop to learn about native plant gardening and how they can implement it in their own homes.
Community members gather at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids for a celebration and blessing of the completion of their native plant bioswale. What began as a vibrant pollinator garden has now expanded into a thoughtfully designed bioswale- a beautiful and natural system that filters and slows stormwater, helping to clean water and reduce flooding.