A new bee garden has become the sunny focal point of the food forest in our environment centre and community gardens for bee awareness month. Fruit trees need bees for pollination and the setting of fruit, so it was a natural fit. Our bee garden plans came to fruition in the first week of spring - the sun shone and the volunteers turned out to help turn our plan into a reality.
The design
We didn't have a huge area to play with, so we made use of an existing structure to hang a potted green wall. Terracotta pots were sealed to reduce water loss in summer, and planted with a selection of carpet thymes, with yellow primroses for added colour. The thyme will eventually drape over the sides of the pots, and bees love their dainty purple flowers. Along this border garden we planted climbers to scramble up the shed plus a selection of bee-friendly plants from the list below. The materials we used in the garden had to fit our sustainability criteria. We used recovered untreated totara for the bench seat and sign. Totara is super durable and was once used as farm fence posts. To dress up our shed, Bambusero were commissioned to create a custom bamboo screen. For stepping stones set into the lawn we reused broken concrete. We planted plugs of lawn chamomile between the stepping stones. A scoria boulder became a centrepiece to the circular garden - just the right shape to hold shallow pools of water on its surface like a bird bath. Bees, not just birds, need water in the garden on hot days.
We already had damp-loving taro growing in this spot, and planted purple and white cineraria, blue salvia and clumping chives as colourful companions. A hebe was planted on the drier side, and water cress was planted at the point where water from the stone occasionally overflows into the garden - it is part of a food forest after all. We chose to extend the bee garden into a 'bee garden walk' to make best use of the site. On the border of the food forest near the plum and apple trees we planted a couple of roses (one spring flowering, the other summer/autumn flowering), lavender, rosemary and a boysenberry. The roses coincidentally were bred in 1949 and 1950, the same years as our environment centre was built.