A native flora preserve and sculpture garden

Give to the Max 2021:

Susan creating a mosaic art installment:

​​Artist Susan Swerda Foss is a multi-media artist.  She was inspired by ethnologist Frances Densmore (1867-1957) to create the MGG in 1989. 


Foss managed Tobies Bakery in Hinckley for 30 years and is now in retirement.  She currently serves on the board of the Sandstone Arts Center. 

​Our mission: to preserve and promote education of the flora used by the Ojibwe tribes for food, medicine, utility and ceremony.​

Special acknowledgment:

With the technical and physical assistance provided by Rodney Foss, a five acre farm field became a botanical sculpture garden based on Ojibwe history.  Rod has hauled rocks, laid out the parameters of a goose, nest and gosling, and built an arbor. He continues to mow the garden perimeters.​​

Rod Foss has a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota.  In 1969, he retired from engineering and bought his parents' dairy farm.  For 28 years, Susan and Rodney operated a dairy farm on the 1917 homestead where the Minnesota Goose Garden is located.​