Gardening for Our Lives: How to Create Corridors of Resilience

 

Join Madame Beespeaker for a garden talk at the Renfrew Park Library

 in east Vancouver on Sunday, March 4, 1:30 pm.

As we lose more and more arable land and wild habitat to development and industrial agricultural, we need to build corridors of resistance, with plants that provide food for wildlife and humans. Lori will discuss how we can pull together to create this edible infrastructure, and defend these pollinator pathways that help preserve the biodiversity that is being lost every day on this planet. Lori will talk about ten tough plants we need to propagate in Vancouver to help boost our chances of keeping Metro Vancouver healthy and green.

This talk is a part of the Super Bloomers artists in community residency at Renfrew Park Community Centre.

Do you like to take photos of flowers? Why not try to capture bumblebees on the flowers in your garden? Find out how you can be a citizen scientist this summer with The Great Canadian Bumblebee Count.


 

Save the Date!: All Soul's Day (November 2) at Moberly with A Beekeeper and a Beespeaker

 Photo by Madame Beespeaker: Gaillardia blossoms in a water dish for bees with shells, stones, moss and twigs for the insects to alight upon.


All Soul's Day with a Beekeeper and a Beespeaker

at Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre

Sunday Nov. 2 @ 2:30 pm to 4 pm.

Where: Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre
7646 Prince Albert Street, (one block east of 60th and Fraser)

Cost: Free

Join us at the Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre Community for a special afternoon with Master Beekeeper Brian Campbell who is customizing new seed mixes of local wildflowers for bees. Brian will talk about his latest work and give us his special tips on how to germinate wildflower seeds.

Lori Weidenhammer aka Madame Beespeaker will talk about Telling the Bees, reviving a tradition of making messages for the bees and informing them of important events such as a death in the community. Participants will be provided with materials to make their own messages for the bees to take home or install in the meditation garden at Moberly.

10 Reasons to Grow a Bee Garden

 

Ten Reasons You Should Grow a Bee Garden:

by Lori Weidenhammer aka Madame Beespeaker

Whether you call it an insectory, a pollinator garden, or a bee garden, plants rich in nectar, pollen, and essential oils will sustain a healthy pollinator population that will benefit your household and the community you belong to.

1) Human survival depends on plant survival which depends on insect survival. Biodiversity of plant base and insect supports a healthy ecosystem. As humans on this planet, we have the responsibility to be informed and responsible stewards of the plants that sustain us. Plants keep our planet breathing. Plants feed us. Plants heal us. Bee gardens give our children a future.

2) Urban sprawl is eating up blossom space, and must be countered by a movement to create blossom density. Our cities need radical gardeners and bee advocates who make sure that space is left for pollinator habitat in cities and towns. Bee gardens are political.

3) The movement towards growing and eating locally depends on bees and other pollinators for its success. Bee gardens preserve food security.

4) Including native pollinator plants in your garden helps preserve biodiversity and keeps the knowledge of working with what grows best in your climate. Bee gardens create and preserve a literacy of local knowledge and local ethnobotanical traditions.

5) Industrial agriculture is creating an environment that is hostile and even toxic to pollinators, threatening the future of our planet. In growing organic bee gardens, insectaries, and pollinator corridors, the health of our planet rests on our organic farmers and gardeners. Bee gardens are an essential part of sustainable agricultural practise.

6) Meliferous plants come from a long cultural tradition and heritage of the relationship between humans and honeybees. Many of us have a lineage of beekeepers in our family traditions which can be passed down from generation to generation, deepening the tradition and culture of organic beekeeping. Bee gardens are a rich part of our cultural heritage.

7) The culture of bee gardening could in itself be a huge growth industry, with nurseries carrying and identifying bee plants and gardeners gaining employment replacing lawns with pollinator plants and creating biodiverse hedgerows and pollinator borders. Bee gardens are a viable economic industry.

8) Waterwise perennial bee gardens potentially use less inputs than lawn and vanity gardens--including weeding, watering, and fertilizing. Bee gardens are an integral part permaculture.

9) Bee gardens can provide a healing oasis and sensuous retreat for the benefits of health for humans and animals. Insectaries stimulate our senses and inspire the poet, artist, and spiritualist inside us all. Bee gardens are good for the soul.

10) Bee gardens give everyone a chance to observe bees and learn about their behavior. Scientists can study the relationship of bees to plants to help optimize the choices we make when we plant our life-sustaining bee gardens. Bee watching could become a popular hobby, much in the same way that bird watching has become a lucrative industry. Bee watching could create an interest and passion in a child that leads them to a career choice: entomology, horticulture, chemistry, psychology, agriculture, ecology, etc. Bee gardens engage, educate and enlighten.

Madame Beespeaker at The South Hill Festival

Did you know pollen comes in all these different colours?

We had a steady stream of folks making messages for the bees.

I will be at the Moberly Herb Garden Most Wednesdays this summer, so stay tuned for more information about how you can get involved in the Moberly Community Herb Garden.

The Madame Beespeaker Anise Hyssop Project

Agastache foeniculum at UBC Farm

 As an advocate for Vancouver's pollinators, I would like to encourage you to plant Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) in your balcony pots, back yard, school or community garden. It is a perennial herb in the mint family with edible purple flowers tasting of sweet licorice, which is why is is often called "Licorice Mint". The leaves can be used fresh or dried to make a delicious calming tisane. Anise hyssop syrup is popular in desserts and cocktails. It has a flavor and scent profile that has been compared to root beer.

Sometimes called the "Honey Wonder Plant," one acre of anise hyssop can support up to 100 honeybee hives. The flowers also attract bumblebees and butterflies. I have grown it in full sun, partial shade and even in small planter boxes. The flower heads dry nicely and retain some of their mauve tinge. You can plant the tiny seeds in the spring or late September, and they germinate best sown close to the surface, barely covered with soil. Anise hyssop can bloom from June through September and if it is planted near your Brassicas, it repels cabbage moths. Agastache foeniculum is native to parts of B.C., Alta., and Sask.

When you grow Anise Hyssop, I encourage you to save the seeds, divide plantings and in turn, pass them on to other gardeners so we can get our city blooming! Large quantities of seed can be bought at Richter's, a Canadian herb company.

Madame Beespeaker's Spring Tonic Licorice Mint Tea

Makes 1 pot

2 tbs dried raspberry leaf

1 tbs dried anise hyssop leaves and dried flowers

1 tbs dried wild bergamot leaves and flowers

1 tbs dried nettles

1 tsp dried elderberries

Pour boiling water over the leaves and let steep for 5 minutes.

This is a calming, balancing, cleansing and healing tea. The elderberry will help your immune system. The anise hyssop is good for your throat and digestion. You could add green black or rooibus tea for more body. Experiment and make it to your own taste. As with any herbal tea, it is medicinal--check with your doctor if you have a medical condition or are currently taking medication before drinking herbal teas.

A native bee naps on the leaf of an anise hyssop plant at UBC Farm

Nest Material Workshop

 This is a great time of the year to put out nesting materials for the birds in your neighborhood. Inspired by the weaving skills birds use to make their nests, we headed to the grounds at Aberthau to pick out some art materials. We found feathers, flowers, twigs, dry grass and some fluffy seed pods.

 We decided these seed pods look like tiny hedgehogs.

I also added some wool yarn, raw sheep wool, old wool sweaters, weeping willow twigs and raffia for us to work with.

 The idea is to create a sculpture to present nesting materials for the birds. The loose bits are cut into small lengths: 3 to eight inches long and they are woven in for the birds to pluck out with their beaks. Any other loose material can be presented in a small basket. Tiny baskets can be used to present cattail or other seedy fluff for hummingbirds.

 We looked at photos of bower bird arches, and nests by weaver birds, hummingbirds and bush tits. I have been watching the bush tits in my neighbor's yard constructing a hanging nest. They use spider webs to hold their nests together, and make it strong and stretchy. Oddly, they are one of the few types of birds where other birds besides the mating couple help make the nest and sleep in it with them. Cosy!

 It's very relaxing to weave in a free-form. I like to weave at the end of a long day, winding down, slowning down and calming the mind.

 Et voila! A beautiful weaving with nesting material inside for the birds. Put this out in your back yard or hand it from your balcony and see what happens!

On the way to the bus stop going home, I heard a hummingbird and a woodpecker. I used the zoom function to take these photos.

I think this is a downy woodpecker--apparently you have to be a very good birder to tell the hairy apart from the downy, but it just says "downy" to me! Check here to hear the different between the two birds.

And on the other side of the road there were two more woodpeckers high up in the branches of the trees. What a treat. As I headed home after dinner and dusk was falling, just outside my door I raised my head and a bald eagle flew above me--another wonderful gift in a day that was for the birds.

Madame Beespeaker's Licorice Mint Tea and Residency

Madame Beespeaker's Licorice Mint Tea Party at Aberthau

Sunday March 24 1:30-3:30 pm

West Point Grey Community Centre: 4397 West 2nd Avenue

Join eco-artist Lori Weidenhammer appearing as Madame Beespeaker for the

Licorice Mint Tea Party where she will be displaying sample projects from a series of workshops we are offering you at the West Point Grey Community Centre Thursdays from March 28 to May 9th.

1. Creating Woven Bird Habitats (all ages welcome): Thurs. March 28, 4-5:30 pm

2. Seeds for Kids (ages 3-12): Thurs., April 4, 4-5:30 pm

3. Growing Edible Flowers and Herbs (all ages welcome): Thurs. April 11, 4-5:30 pm

4. Messages for the Bees with Madame Beespeaker (all ages welcome): Thurs. April 18, 4-5:30 pm

5 Garden Journaling (age 12 and up) Thursday April 25, 4-5:30 pm

6 Singing with the Birds and Bees: exploring your natural voice (all ages welcome) Thurs. May 2, 4-5:30 pm

7th Stories with the Queen Bee (suited for children 4-11, but all ages welcome) Thurs. May 9, 4-5:30 pm

8th Herbal Craft: Bathtub Teas (all ages welcome), Thurs. May 16, 4-5:30 pm

9th Funky Humming Bird Feeders (ages 9 and up) , Thurs. May 23, 4-5:30 pm

Note: Workshops are $5 per person per session. Adults, please accompany children under 6 years.

Beespeaker 100

Bumblebee resting on buckwheat. It's interesting how pale her head is. She actually blends in quite well with this plant because the buckwheat seeds are quite dark in contrast with the blossoms.

Hey, it's time to celebrate Madame Beespeaker's 1ooth post for this blog! Woot! I am so happy to have this seasonal diary as a template for future adventures in beespeaking and urban beekeeping. Using this diary, I'll be able to write a more in-depth blog in the next couple of years. I am planning to continue working as Madame Beespeaker, creating some more community art projects and art education projects while expanding my use of materials and performance methods. At the same time I will branch off into a who new shoot of work involving moths. I've turned into such an insect nerd! (My child hood was all about rocks, but that's another story.)

An unidentified smaller bee covered in pollen on the corepsis. The blanket flower head was in the way of my camera lens!

Creating this bee garden at MOP with my helpers has been such as incredible privilege. I just picked up a lovely book by Jim Nollman called Why We Garden: Cultivating a Sense of Place. (Yes, it's the guy who talks to whales--we must be kindred spirits.) Why garden? This about sums it up: "With a lot of tender loving care, good landscaping design, and savvy plant knowledge, most everything a human being needs in this world--including food, comfort, museum, university, social clubhouse--will be there for foraging." (pg. 58) It's this sense of self-containment that I find so satisfying. I enjoy the garden as gesamtkunstwerk. I like the semi-privacy of my back yard garden, but also the social nature of the MOP as a community garden. As a transplant from the prairies, gardening in both private and shared spaces helps me feel anchored and rooted, and gives me the sense of belonging I pine for.

In some ways this blog is just the tip of the ice berg--just me jotting down some basic thoughts and impressions so I can go in and create something new from this diary. I will use the photographs and my experience with growing to help create an artist book or a set of cards on how to create your own bee garden. Even though I don't get many written comments. (Ahem.) People do chat with me about what they read on the blog, which is another reason for its existence.

In the meantime, I am losing myself in the experience of summer while it lasts.

It's not over yet, but I want to thank my colleagues in the art collective MOPARRC (Means of Production Artists' Raw Resource Collective): Sharon Kallis, Lois Klassen, and Jody Macdonald. I also want to thank the staff at the Environmental Youth Alliance, especially Samantha and Rhianna, whose feedback and advice has been an integral part of the project. A big thanks to bee garden designer Jean Kindratsky and bee consultant Brian Campbell. Thanks to the volunteers and to all the people who invited me into their gardens, for those little glimpses into their visions of paradise.

Bee Happy: A Workshop for Children

When I created the character of Madame Beespeaker, this is the kind of event I dreamed of: neighbourhood folks getting together to make art celebrating bees. The event was organized by my friend Bear, who is a wonderful artist and art educator. We are so lucky to have her living in our neighborhood.

Children made messages for the bees to take home and/or to put in the mailbox for the bees that Bear created for her new bee garden. She happened to have some of this old library ephemera which we recycled.


I love this posture of absolute concentration!

Bear's bee garden is planted with different kinds of lavender, salvia, and phacelia.

The children were given examples of images of different kinds of bees to use as inspiration.

My favorite message of the day was written by a serious little boy. It simply said "I like cheese."

Although it was cool for this time of the year, thankfully the rain held off and we were able to stay outdoors. (Click on the image above if you want to read the text.)

The great thing about having these bee gardens in pubic spaces is that the neighbors can see how the plants develop and how the kids can play safely around bees without worrying too much about being stung. We watched a bumble bee taking a nap on the salvia, and another bee foraging in the phacelia.


Bear set up a table for the kids to draw and paint garden markers with pictures of bees and the plants that are in the garden. Everyone was invited to make one to take home and one that would remain in the two bee gardens.


The older kids put on safety glasses and hammered in their own nails, but there were adults on hand to help the younger ones.

A trio of beautiful bees!


The plant name markers are great sources of information for people who want to grow bee plants in their own gardens.

The second bee garden is at the neighbor's house. She organized a honey tasting table which was very popular.

There was also a lemonade stand with proceeds donated to the MOP Garden. I was presented with twelve dollars and seventy five cents. Thanks guys!



Yay for neighbourhood small grants and the fantastic people who put them to good use to create community!


The event was funded by a small neighborhood grant.