- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That's what world-class pollinator garden designer, pollinator advocate and author Kate Frey told the crowd at the fourth annual UC Davis Bee Symposium, hosted by the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center and the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
She's seen faces light up, steps quicken, and frowns turn to smiles as visitors tour gardens, including the ones she's designed at the Chelsea Flower Show in London, Sonoma Cornerstone in Sonoma, Lynmar Estate Winery and Gardens in Sebastopol, Melissa Gardens (privately owned) in Healdsburg, and the Ben and Kate Frey Gardens (privately owned) in Hopland.
“Bee gardens make us happy and are good for wildlife,” Frey reiterated. She's the co-author of the award-winning book, The Bee Friendly Garden, with Professor Gretchen LeBuhn of San Francisco State University, a book that details how to design an abundant, flower-filled garden that nurtures bees and supports biodiversity.
Frey, a two-time gold medal winner at the Chelsea Flower Show and co-founder of The American Garden School, illustrated her talk with photos of native bees, the plants they love, and the gardens they populate. In showing an image of a bumble bee on a California golden poppy, Frey commented “It looks like love.”
Yes, it does, the audience agreed.
Frey noted that of the 20,000 species of bees worldwide, 4000 species inhabit the United States, and 1600 of them are found in California. A good many of them, she said, are found in the UC Berkeley Urban Gardens launched by UC Berkeley Professor Gordon Frankie (see UC Berkeley Urban Bee Lab).
“Seventy-percent of our native bees are ground nesting,” she said, “so leave some uncovered space in your garden for them.”
“Our gardens can be positive spaces for diversity,” Frey related. "Native plants are best for native bees but many (bees) are generalists.” For example, the squash bee is a specialist, foraging only on cucurbits (these include squash, cucumber and zucchini), while bumble bees are generalists, foraging on scores of plants, from poppies to salvia (sage).
Frey offered these "simple rules for success" for bee gardeners:
- Create healthy gardens that require no pesticides by using the right plant, right approach, add quality compost to all plants and irrigate adequately
- Think in terms of abundance, not minimalism
- Aim for this goal: 12 months of bloom throughout the garden
- Plant annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees
- Make sure plants do offer floral resources, as many common landscape don't
- Provide patches or repeated plants of the same flower. Honey bees practice floral constancy
- Include water for honey bees
- Note that sunny spaces are the best.
- Use native and non-native plants.
- Provide mulch-free nest sites and drllled bee blocks (or "bee condos" where blue orchard bees and leafcutter bees can make their nests)
In the Frey gardens, "closeness" is important. "I have a phobia that plants SHOULD touch one another," she quipped. "Don't space them far apart."
Frey also pointed out that some so-called "weeds" shouldn't be labeled as such. "Some great weeds (that bees love) are Hemezonia congesta or tarweed and Trichostemma lanceolatum or vinegar weed," she said. Both are annual herbs that are native to California.
All in all, happiness is a bee garden.
As Frey writes in the introduction of The Bee Friendly Garden: "Spending time in a bee garden allows us to step into another world transcending the everyday routine and entering a place of beauty and anticipation. With these gardens, we develop and maintain a connection to something larger than ourselves--we get to see and know the intrinsic value of the flowers and the lives of the bees that visit them in each season."

- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's almost time to celebrate! Or cele-bee-ate!
In observation of National Pollinator Week, the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology has scheduled an open house at its half-acre bee garden, the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven from 5:30 to 7 p..m., Friday, June 19. The haven is located on Bee Biology Road, next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, west of the central campus.
Activities will include bee observation and identification, honey tasting, sales of native bee houses to support the haven, and information about low-water plants.
Low-water plants? This is especially important now that California is in the fourth year of a severe drought. Many people are letting their lawns go from green to brown, removing their lawns to plant bee-friendly plants, or selecting drought-tolerant plants.
The garden is open from dawn to dusk every day of the week. Admission is free. It's anchored by a six-foot-long mosaic sculpture of a worker bee, "Miss Beehaven," the work of Davis artist Donna Billick, co-founder and co-director (emeritus) of the UC Davis Art Science Fusion Project.
The haven was planted in 2009, thanks to a generous donation from Häagen-Dazs. More than 50 percent of their ice cream flavors depend on pollination.
The garden came to life under the direction of Lynn Kimsey, interim chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. "I suggested the idea of a demonstration bee garden that would serve two purposes, to provide food for our colonies and as a lovely place to educate the public," Kimsey recalled. Professor Kimsey directs the Bohart Museum of Entomology, home of nearly eight million specimens, and teaches entomology.
A Sausalito team--landscape architects Donald Sibbett and Ann F. Baker, interpretative planner Jessica Brainard and exhibit designer Chika Kurotaki--won the international design competition
Kimsey was singled out for her work in founding and directing the installation of the garden when the Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America honored her and four others--"The Bee Team"--with the 2013 outstanding team award. The history of the garden is on the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology website at http://bit.ly/1OAtD6W.
A private opening of the garden occurred Oct. 16, 2009 and a grand opening celebration took place Sept. 11, 2010.
Haven manager Chris Casey offers group tours for a nominal fee. Access the website for more information. The website also includes a list of plants in the haven list of plants in the haven, by common name and botanical name; a list of donors and how to donate.
The haven is a good place to "bee" on June 19.



- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
When the half-acre Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven is implemented by the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis later this year, honey bees won't be the only ones enjoying the garden.
Expect to see butterflies, bumblebees and other insects.
Remember the project? Last December Häagen-Dazs ice cream committed $125,000 to the UC Davis Department of Entomology for the bee haven. A Sausalito team-- landscape architects Donald Sibbett and Ann F. Baker, interpretative planner Jessica Brainard and exhibit designer Chika Kurotaki--won the design competition, which drew 30 entries. One was submitted from as far away as England.
The key goals of the garden are to provide bees with a year-around food source, to raise public awareness about the plight of honey bees and to encourage visitors to plant bee-friendly gardens of their own.
We’re all eagerly looking forward to the garden, which will be dedicated in October.
Meanwhile, scientists at the Laidlaw facility plan to examine the diversity of insects already there. One insect we saw there last week was a soapberry bug on a flowering almond tree.
So bees, butterflies, bumblebees and soapberry bugs.
Among others.
Lots of others.
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- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Twenty-nine days to go.
If you love bees and know how to design a bee friendly garden, remember Jan. 30.
Jan. 30 is the deadline to submit your design for the half-acre bee friendly garden at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis. The nationwide competition is funded by Häagen-Dazs.
This will be a pollinator paradise that will meet the nutritional needs of honey bees and serve as a living laboratory.
"It will provide a much needed, year-around food source for our bees," said Lynn Kimsey, chair of the Department of Entomology and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. "We anticipate it also will be a gathering place to inform and educate the public about bees."
The UC Davis Department of Entomology Web site lists the rules, the prizes, and provides a list of bee-favorite flowering plants. Plans call for "something" to be blooming throughout the year.
The long list of flowering plants includes sages, toyon, catmint and lavender.
To that I'd add the rock purslane (Calandrinia grandiflora). In our own bee friendly garden, that's a favorite of the bees. And guess what? It's blooming right now, in the dead of winter. Ray Lopez, owner of El Rancho Nursery, Vacaville (where we bought the plant), says it blooms throughout the year in California.
We haven't seen the bees lately, but the rock purslane is waiting for them.


- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
There's been trouble in paradise far too long.
Now, thanks to a generous donation from Häagen-Dazs, there will be a pollinator paradise--in the way of a bee friendly garden--at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis.
Häagen-Dazs announced this week it will donate $125,000 to the UC Davis Department of Entomology to launch a nationwide design competition to create a one-half acre honey bee haven garden on Bee Biology Road. Häagen-Dazs has commited $65,000 of the $125,000 to establish the garden.
"The honey bee haven will be a pollinator paradise," said Lynn Kimsey, chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. "It will provide a much needed, year-round food source for our bees at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. We anticipate it also will be a gathering place to inform and educate the public about bees. We are grateful to Haagen-Dazs for its continued efforts to ensure bee health."
And you are invited to design it. The nationwide contest is open to anyone who can design a garden, using basic landscape principles. The rules, a list of bee friendly plants, design examples and other information is on the UC Davis Department of Entomology Web site.
Häagen-Dazs is funding the design competition and the
"The garden will be extremely helpful in demonstrating that bees are not a nuisance in the backyard, but instead are obtaining food and water essential for their survival," Eric Mussen, a Cooperative Extension apiculturist and a 32-year member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty, told us.
"Campus visitors," he said. "will be able to see which flowers are most attractive to foraging honey bees and how to space the flowers in order to have bees flying in the most convenient areas of their gardens.”
The deadline to submit a design is Jan. 30, 2009. Mail your design to the
More information on the design competition is available from Melissa Borel, program manager at UC Davis'
You should also check out the Häagen-Dazs educational Web site at http://www.helpthehoneybees.com. In February they commited a total of $250,000 in honey bee research to UC Davis and Pennsylvania State. And now: another way to help the honey bees.
The design competition winner will receive recognition on the Häagen-Dazs commemorative plaque at the entrance to the garden. Another gift will be a year's supply of Häagen-Dazs ice cream.
