THE BEE-FRIENDLY GARDEN

This guide to designing a bee garden helps gardeners create a stunningly colorful, vibrant, healthy habitat that attracts both honeybees and native bees.

There are many benefits to having a bee garden, both personal and global. Not only are bee gardens gorgeous, they are organic, pesticide-free, and ecologically sustainable. For fruit and vegetable gardeners, inviting nature's most productive pollinator into the yard can provide an impressive increase in yields. And finally, bee gardens help fight the much-publicized decline in bee population.

In The Bee-Friendly Garden, award-winning garden designer Kate Frey and bee expert Gretchen LeBuhn provide everything readers need, from "super blooming" flowers and planting basics, to garden plans and plants to avoid. Illustrated with spectacular full-color photos, the book debunks myths about bees, explains seasonal flower progression, and provides how-to instructions for nest boxes and water features.

KATE FREY is a garden designer specializing in sustainable, insect-hospitable landscaping, including the honeybee sanctuary The Melissa Garden (themelissagarden.com). She has written for Gardens Illustrated and Pacific Horticulturemagazines, is a popular speaker at garden shows and clubs, and lives in Hopland, CA. Learn more at FreyGardens.com.
GRETCHEN LEBUHN is a professor of biology at San Francisco State University and the author/editor of two books on pollinators, Field Guide to the Common Bees of California and Attracting Native Pollinators. She is the founder and director of The Great Sunflower Project (www.greatsunflower.org), a national citizen science program designed to gather information about bee diversity and activity.