I am
immensely grateful to Annie and Elayne at
Annie's Annuals & Perennials for giving me the opportunity to accompany their crew on a guided tour of
The Melissa Garden today with its designer, Kate Frey.
About Mrs. Frey:
link,
link, and
link. She has also written a number of articles and book reviews for
Pacific Horticulture. Articles since 2004 can be read online
here (type her name in the search field), including
this 2009 article about the Melissa.
So who's Melissa?
"We chose the name “Melissa” because Melissa officinalis, or Lemon Balm, is an herbaceous plant that has been considered a favorite bee plant for a very long time. Also, in Greek mythology, Melissa is the name of one of the nymphs that fed Zeus honey as an infant while hiding him from his father, Cronus. When Cronus discovered this, he turned her into a worm. After Zeus came into power, he changed her into a queen bee, not being able to change her from an insect form. Melissa is a Greek word meaning honeybee."
More, from
the Garden's website:
"The Melissa Garden is a honeybee sanctuary in Healdsburg, California, at the western side of the Russian River Valley. Two acres of gardens planted with honeybee forage are situated in the center of a pristine 40-acre ranch that is lush with native vegetation. The Melissa Garden is a new project that began in the fall of 2007. It is being created to provide honeybees with a place to live natural lives, insulated from known stressors, and nourished in a beautiful setting."
(Speaking of the beautiful setting, on my way there this morning, I drove right by
Layanee's favorite wine country B&B, the
Raford Inn.
She blogged about staying there in December 2008.)
The Melissa is open to the public one day a month for tours and education. Kate gave us a nice lesson on honeybees, a subject about which I know relatively little. You will not be surprised to learn that Wikipedia has a good page on
beehives, but did you know certain types of beehives are
illegal in the United States? Illegal beehives!
"Skeps and other fixed-frame hives are no longer in wide use (and are illegal in many countries) because the bees and the comb cannot be inspected for disease or parasites without destruction of the honeycomb and usually the colony." (Wikipedia)
However, according to Kate, people in many places outside the US still keep honeybees in fixed-frame hives.
This visit today was especially poignant in the aftermath of a recent
mass killing of bees at a community garden here in San Francisco. Very sad.
Moving on...
The tour starts in the parking lot, with a sculpture by Sebastopol husband-and-wife team
Patrick Amiot and Brigitte Laurent.
And from here we move in to the first garden.
We saw beehives distributed throughout the gardens. I think there were at least ten of them.
Claire and Elayne took
amazing pictures right next to one hive, but I kept a respectful distance. (Also check out Elayne's picture of a
bee-mimicking clearwing moth sipping
Verbena bonariensis.)
I love fountain-ponds like this.
Let pieces of cork-board (or
wine corks!) float in your pond for your honeybee's drinking comfort.
Also let wildflowers volunteer in your garden's gravel paths. I love that.
There's a rebar pergola supporting apples and pears behind the fountain. I firmly believe garden fruit trees should be kept small enough to reach the tree's highest-hanging fruit with an outstretched arm.
Okay, you can have a step-ladder if you're petite. 
I made two new plant finds on this trip, including
Calamintha nepetoides. Do you know about this plant? I gather many people do...
Xris
said pollinators, especially small native bees, "swarm it" in
his Brooklyn garden. I must have some. The calamint enhanced everything it grew with.
My other new plant is the tall, slender, vertical just left of the phormium below,
Helianthus giganteus.
This perennial sunflower comes from the eastern US. Do you grow it? Tell me about it in the comments. We don't have a lot of perennial sunflowers in the trade, but those that we do have all come from
you know who.
By this point we've moved away from the boisterous bee garden and into the more formal (but still very bee-friendly) California-style gardens Kate designed for the areas around the house.
There were some more fountains and a stunning pool.
Elayne and I went a little camera crazy here.
A bed behind the pool house--white yarrow, more Calamintha, California coast buckwheat (
Eriogonum latifolium)--held all of our attention for a good half an hour.
More plants for the California-native white garden...
The light food offering held our interest too... Offer
your garden visitors a tahini and honey spread for crackers and lemon balm, lemon verbena, chocolate mint tea. You will hold people's interest too.
I hope it's okay to show a few pictures of the pool house...I don't know if this would be part of the Melissa Garden's public tour. I'm generally unmoved by the whole lifestyle design thing, but the pool house was so lovely, even I was swooning.
Yeah, I could relax here.
But we're not done. There's something to see on driveway behind the house...
Who can resist a path into the woods.
Where does it lead?
Kate, and puppy, urging us on...
And here we are.
Well, we knew it was a labyrinth. I didn't want to give it away.
The spent
Allium seedheads shimmered in the light...
while the ubiquitous
Hemizonia congesta ssp. sparkled in sun and shade.
It was a suitably magical place to end our tour.
