Grand Celebration

The garden is lookin' good.

That would be the half-acre Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a bee friendly garden planted last fall next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis. It's part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and was planted under the tenure of entomologist-professor Lynn Kimsey, then chair of the department. (She doubles as director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology.)

Melissa "Missy" Borel,  program manager for the California Center for Urban Horticulture and coordinator of the design competition (won by a Sausalito team), and UC Davis plant sciences student Alyssa Andersen, launched a volunteer program to keep the garden weed-free. 

On any given day, you'll see volunteers tending the garden--pulling weeds, planting replacements, and eyeing any ground squirrel/gopher damage.

Jackie Cheng, a junior majoring in environmental policy analysis and planning at UC Davis, is one of the volunteers. She recently worked in a patch of seaside daisies (Erigeron glaucus), a bee and butterfly favorite.  

The seaside daisy, a perennial, boasts lavender daisylike flowers that make spectacular photos.

Get ready. The grand opening celebration of the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 11. Plans are under way to make this a momentous event and a year-around campus destination.