If you build it they will come.

The Gardens at Lake Merritt are well-known as a showcase for a plethora of species of flora.  Recently, a leaky, resource-wasting water feature– designed in a day when few questioned the constant draining, cleaning and refilling involved in maintaining decorative ponds– was transformed into a habitat for several species of  fauna– dragonflies, damselflies and tree frogs.

What started as a badge project concept for Eagle Scout, Jordan Soulman,  coalesced around Park Supervisor Tora Rocha’s long-held notion that the Gardens’ mid-20th Century water feature might be more efficiently maintained through the installation of a cutting-edge bio-filtration system.

The project came together quite quickly and took a virtual village to accomplish.

Among the contributing personnel and organizations:

With Native Bee Specialist Celeste Ets-Hokin

Early spring is the right time to rejuvenate or plant for a soon to be blooming, fragrant and buzzing native bee garden. A premier example of plant selection and pairing can be seen in the new native bee garden overseen by native bee specialist Celeste Ets-Hokin. The bee garden is located in the Pollinator Garden (across from the Edible Demonstration Gardens –look for the Pollinator signs).

“A good bee garden should include a mix of pollen- and nectar-rich annuals and perennials, offering flowers of different colors, sizes, shapes and bloom periods.  And of course you’ll want to make sure that at least some of these plants are California natives.  Native plants are generally four times more attractive than exotic varieties to our native bees,” says Celeste.

To give you a head start, here’s a look at some of the perennials and annuals she’s introduced to the bee garden. Then to learn more about native bees and the creation of their glorious garden in the Gardens at Lake merritt, be sure to read the following article by Celeste, “The BEE-UTIFUL Gardens at Lake Merritt:  We Built It and They Came!”

PERENNIALS

California Natives:

Erigeron glaucus (seaside daisy), “Bountiful” and “Wayne Roderick” cultivars

Grindelia stricta (gumplant)

Penstemon heterophyllus (beardtongue), “Margarita BOP” cultivar

Spheralcea ambigua (desert mallow),

Lupinus latifolius parishii (lupine)

Monardella villosa (coyote mint)

Solidago californica (goldenrod)

Exotics:

Agastache (giant hyssop) – there are some native species, but more difficult to locate

Bulbine frutescens (bulbine)

Coreopsis lanceolata (tickseed)

Calamintha (calamint)

Gaillardia (Arizona blanket flower) “Oranges and Lemons” cultivar

Lavandula (Spanish lavender)

Helenium (sneezeweed)

Nepeta (catmint)

Salvia melissidora (sage)

Salvia uliginosa (sage)

ANNUAL SEEDS:

Best scorpionweed species –

Phacelia tanacetifolia

Phacelia distans

Phacelia cicutaria

Phacelia campanularia

Eschscholzia (California poppy)

Lupinus succulentus arroyo (arroyo lupine)

Gilia capitata (gilia)

Cosmos bipinnatus (cosmos)

Cosmos sulphureus (cosmos)

The BEE-UTIFUL Gardens at Lake Merritt:  We Built It and They Came!

Article by Celeste Ets-Hokin, native bee expert and advocate overseeing

 the Gardens’ native bee garden

There are some 4000 species of bees that originated here in North America, and these native bees are far and away our most important pollinators.  Their pollinating services are vital to the survival of North American plant communities, which in turn provide food and shelter for the many animals in these ecosystems.  Ironically, the more familiar honey bee, an introduced species from Europe, is not included in this group of essential native pollinators.

Like the honey bee, our native bee populations are suffering steep declines nationwide, threatened by habitat loss and pesticide poisoning.   While these trends are alarming to environmental scientists, most of the rest of us aren’t even aware of the existence of native bees, let alone their astonishing diversity or their profound importance to our ecosystems and food webs.

So about four years ago I began working with the Alameda County Master Gardeners to establish a native bee demonstration garden within their section of the Gardens at Lake Merritt.  Our goal was to attract a diversity of native bees to the garden and introduce the public to this amazing and colorful cast of characters.  We hoped to educate gardeners about how easy and rewarding it is to create a bee-friendly garden and participate in the conservation of these critical species.

Beginning in February of 2009, we planted a diversity of California native and exotic plants known to offer good pollen and nectar resources for our native bees.  We added a few nesting blocks for solitary wood nesting bees, and kept much of the area free from mulch, to allow ground-nesting bees easy access to the soil substrate.  Then we waited to see who showed up.

We couldn’t have been more delighted.  Our small efforts were rewarded by a steady stream of native bee visitors from spring through fall, including mason, mining, digger, leaf-cutter, long-horn, sweat, cuckoo and bumble bees.  Our little bee garden was living proof that when you build it, they will come!

Now it’s been just over a year since we moved our demonstration bee garden from the modest section of the ACMG trials area to a larger, sunnier, triangular plot at the center of the Lake Merritt Gardens.  The new site is easily identified by a large stump at one end, drilled with holes for wood-nesting bees, as well as a sign provided by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, designating the area as a pollinator habitat.

And within a few short months of its establishment, what a glorious pollinator habitat the new location became!  I must admit that on that cold bleak day in January of 2012, when we first transplanted our proven perennials from the old site, we had our doubts about the new garden.  There wasn’t much to see then but an expanse of muddy ground, interrupted here and there with some twiggy clumps holding on to a few sad looking leaves.

But by the end of the year we had seen roughly 80 species of native bees visit the prolific succession of spring, summer and fall blooming plants that soon blanketed the entire plot.  And on any given day there was such an abundance of bees that one visitor to the gardens declared it to be “Bumble Bee Central”! So for all you Doubting Thomas’s out there who think you can’t readily build a bee-friendly garden, think again!

I hope the story of the Lake Merritt bee garden will inspire gardeners everywhere to join us in creating habitat for our VIP (very important pollinators) native bees.  Together we can make the landscape BEE-UTIFUL!

In addition, Celeste has authored an extraordinary resource for true bee and pollinator enthusiasts “Garden Variety Native Bees of North America – Perpetual Calendar.” It is a wealth of stunning photography and pollen and nectar sources.  For more information contact: celeste.ets@comcast.net.

The walk and talk will be led by Tora Rocha, Park Supervisor for the City of Oakland and founder of the Pollinator Posse, a volunteer group working  to create pollination corridors as well as hand-rear butterflies to increase survival rates (and because it’s fun).

She’ll teach you about what’s going on behind-the-scenes to increase pollinator activity in Oakland through initiatives like creating pollination corridors, managing and creating habitat through projects like the Bee Hotel, and more!

You can also learn how to get involved with the Gardens to help create more habitat and join the Pollinator Posse to raise and release your very own monarch, if you’re so inspired.

For more info, check out the invite on the Wild Oakland website.

The next time you visit  the Vireya and Pollinator gardens, you will see something new: Permanent, botanical garden-quality plant identification signs engraved with the common name, botanical name, and plant family of each plant!

You also might see Gardens intern and Merritt College student Elaine O. placing the signs and taking notes about which plant placards still need to be engraved. I recently caught up with Elaine while she was making her rounds to find out more about her work on the signage project.

Intern Elaine O.

Elaine is quick to mention an additional benefit of the Plant ID signage project. She also is making a plant inventory which will be available to visitors as plant lists organized by garden and plant family. While the plant ID signs educate visitors in the Gardens, the plant lists will be available on this website for ongoing reference.

After all, we want people to be able to create amazing pollinator habitats in their own back yards. While our Pollinator Garden demonstrates the concept and showcases the amazing results –monarchs, hummingbirds, and bees everywhere! — our plant lists will help people choose and purchase the right shrubs and perennials for attracting the specific pollinators we consider Oakland locals.

This signage project is sponsored by the Hillside Gardeners and Merritt College and is just the beginning of an effort to bring permanent plant ID placards into all the Gardens at Lake Merritt. Directional signage for the gardens is also a top priority, says Oakland Public Works Park Supervisor Tora Rocha. In addition to assisting visitors, proper and thorough signage is important to groups like the Trust for Public Land, which can be instrumental in helping the Gardens raise much-needed funds for additional maintenance and improvement projects.

“Professional-looking, permanent plant ID and directional signage is a big step toward the Gardens earning a botanical garden classification,” says Rocha.

Butterflies, beautiful and important pollinators, are thriving in the Gardens thanks to Park Supervisor Tora Rocha and the schoolchildren and garden regulars she has enlisted to help incubate and release some 20 Monarch butterflies.

Each Monarch lays about 1,000 eggs with only one or two making it to adulthood. Fungus, wasps and flies are a Monarch egg’s nemesis. The lifespan of a Monarch is about four months, and it takes four generations of Monarchs to make the return journey to the start point of their migration.  Our local Monarchs migrate to the central deserts (Mojave or Arizona) in February, then to British Columbia in late spring, returning to the Bay Area in the fall.

Monarchs thrive on Mexican Butterfly Weed or Scarlet Milkweed. These plants act as hosts for the egg, caterpillar and chrysalis stages.  With this in mind, Oakland Public Works and garden volunteers are restoring the Gardens’ three pollinator gardens located adjacent to the Community Edible Garden.  In addition to providing native butterfly habitat, a native bee and hummingbird garden have been newly planted.

The Monarchs seem to truly appreciate Tora’s efforts of collecting and protecting eggs, incubating and feeding the caterpillars and releasing them in the Gardens.  More than one has landed on her shoulder after being released, offering a quick thanks and hello.

“Butterflies are a wonderful way to teach inner city kids the beauty and importance of nature,” says Rocha. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a native butterfly house in the Gardens at Lake Merritt, she whispered.

Visit the Gardens and let us know how many butterflies you spot.

Swallowtail butterflies are large, colorful butterflies in the family of Papilionidae, which includes more than 550 species. Though the majority are tropical, members of the family occur on every continent except Antarctica.  The family includes the largest butterflies in the world.

The following article is an excerpt from a talk given in the Gardens at Lake Merritt by native bee advocate Celeste Ets-Hokin.

Eighty percent of the planet’s 250,000 flowering plants, including much of our food, depend on pollinating insects.  Bees are the most important pollinators for maintaining our food supply and keeping ecosystems alive.

Why are bees unique pollinators? Most insects, unlike bees, land on a flower to bask, find a mate, drink nectar or eat. Flower pollen adheres to them and brushes off on subsequent blooms they visit.

 Bees are different. The female bee deliberately collects pollen to provision her nest. In her quest for pollen, a female bee may visit hundreds of flowers during a single foraging trip.

There are approximately 4,000 native bee species in North America and some 1600 species in California. The honey bee, brought to North America in the 1600s by European settlers, is different from our native bees. Honey bees are highly social and live in colonies comprised primarily of female workers and a single egg-laying queen.  Native bees are mostly solitary. Each female bee builds and provisions a nest in which to lay her eggs.  These nests are mostly built in the ground or in a wood cavity.

The female bee lays a series of eggs in her tunnel nest, each one contained in an individual compartment or cell. Generally, each generation of offspring will include both males and females, with females laid at the back of the nest, and males occupying the cells nearest to the nest entrance.  She creates the partitions between the cells with materials collected from the environment, such as mud or leaves.

Solitary native bees are not aggressive, and many have only a mild sting. Male bees have no stinger whatsoever.  North American bees range widely in size, from tiny sweat bees measuring less than ¼” in length, to robust carpenter bees and bumble bee queens, often exceeding an inch. They also vary widely in colors and patterns — from metallic green or iridescent blue, to red, black, grey, brown, yellow, and even spotted.

Native bees are far more efficient than honey bees at pollinating crops such as apples, cherries, squash, watermelon, blueberries, cranberries and tomatoes. Native bees currently contribute some $3 billion each year in crop pollination serves. Recent research suggests that native bees can pollinate nearly all of our current crops if given sufficient habitat.

Natural bee habitat areas, however, are steadily diminishing making residential gardens increasingly important as habitat for many bee species. By following the three “build it and they will come”principles below, both gardeners and growers will enjoy the rewards of prodigious pollination services.

Plant a variety of bee-friendly plants with different bloom periods to ensure a continuous supply of pollen and nectar throughout the spring, summer and fall nesting seasons. Be sure to include a selection of native plants as these plants are best adapted to the region and therefore attract regional native bees. Native plants offer the additional advantages of generally requiring less water, little or no fertilizer, and providing habitat for other beneficial insects, birds and wildlife.  

Create nest sites by leaving areas of undisturbed, un-mulched soil and by offering wood nests. Bare soil will provide nesting opportunities for the 70% of our native bees that nest in the ground. Mulch prevents females from establishing their ground nests, and tilling can destroy existing ones. The remaining 30% of our native bees are wood-nesting, and will benefit from snags or stumps left in place, or by the placement of artificial tunnel nests around your property.

Avoid the use of pesticides and herbicides. Pesticides will harm not only our native bees, but a spectrum of beneficial insects that would otherwise naturally control garden and crop pests.

For information on selecting the best seasonal bee plants for California native bees, visit nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens.  For general information on native pollinators and how to attract them to your gardens, parks, open spaces and farms, visit the Xerces Society website at www.xerces.org.    

Celeste Ets-Hokin is dedicated to promoting awareness of native bees, their vital role in our ecosystems, and the measures required to ensure their conservation.  She is dedicated to fostering a transition to a more conservation based system of agriculture, which supports and depends on biodiversity.

Her North American Bee Calendars, created to assist gardeners in identifying and attracting native bees through photos and descriptions of distinguishing characteristics, emergence times, nesting habits and recommended floral resources for each featured bee genus, is a tremendous step forward in raising awareness of the critical role native bees play in the health and well being of the planet.

In addition, Celeste is collaborating with the Alameda County Master Gardeners in the Trials Garden located in the Gardens at Lake Merritt. She has created a native bee garden area including native bee attracting plants and nesting blocks for the habitat. It is a beautiful and buzzing area of the garden.

Celeste Ets-Hoskin can be reached at celeste.ets@comcast.net.

The highly informative talk was part of the Alameda County Master Gardeners 2011 Speaker Series.  The 2011 Series concluded in October 2011 and will resume in the summer of 2012.