By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer
Honey bees get all the press , but they don't do all the work. There are dozens of species of native bees equally willing to pollinate your plants. One of them, the bumble bee, we all know and love. But the smaller ones -- Anthidium, Xylocopa, Osmia, Halictid, Andrenid, Megachillid, Mlissodes, Anthophorid, -- you likely don't even notice. The guy seen here--a Halictid, I'm guessing--is an example.
It's not hard to attract more of these hard workers to your garden. All it takes is providing the right nectar plants. Emerson Commmunity Garden in San Luis Obispo is proving just how quickly you can get results.
The gardeners using the twenty nine plots in the Garden began an experiment with entomologist Dr. Gordon Frankie of the University of California Berkeley in 2007. They began adding flowers known to attract these bees to their individual plots. (The gardeners were primarily interested in growing edibles, and there were few ornamentals in the Garden when the experiment began.)
It didn't take long to see an increase in the number and type of bees showing up. What's more, says Barbara Smith, one of the plot holders and the local coordinator of the project -- it's her space you see below -- everyone in the community garden has seen improvements in their crop yields. And yields get a little better each season as the gardeners learn more about bee gardening and the number and variety of bees keeps improving.
You don't have to grow anything exotic either as you can see. Toadflax (Linaria purpurea) gallardia, catmint, asters, rudbeckia, and salvias -- all common garden ornamentals -- are doing a great job luring in native bees at Emerson Community Garden. There is no shortage of honey bees here either.
If you're in San Luis Obispo drop by and take a look. Emerson is at the corner of Nipomo and Pismo Streets. Look for plants with markers like this to see what they're luring in. Or visit the U.C. Berkeley Urban Bee Gardens website to find out what to plant.
Sunset's garden staff is so enthused about the success of the Emerson example, we're going to add some of the plants from Dr. Frankie's list in our own test garden. Can you have the same success in a small garden about the size as a typical backyard as you can in a community garden? We'll let you know.
Or, if you're doing it already, please tell us about your successes.
