KSFB Project Features Native Plants, a Bee Sculpture, and Bee Hotel

Thanks to the efforts of Keep Santa Fe Beautiful (KSFB) and partners, Santa Fe has a new pollinator garden at Calle Alvarado Park! In addition to native wildflowers and plants, the garden also features a bee hotel and a bee sculpture commissioned from a local artist. Last week, Mayor Alan Webber and Councilors Jamie Cassutt and Carol Romero-Wirth joined KSFB board members and City staff to celebrate the project’s completion and welcome the bees.

The bee sculpture is made with found, reclaimed, and recycled materials and is fixed on top of a blue sandstone monolith. Artist John Knox used broken and tumbled glass, pennies, and littered cans that he collected to create the impressive bee.

The bee hotel is a sanctuary for solitary bees like leaf cutters, mason, and miner bees. Honey bees and bumble bees represent only about ten percent of the bees in New Mexico, and these other solitary species are vital for pollinating plants and keeping our city clean, green and beautiful – the mission of Keep Santa Fe Beautiful. This new bee hotel provides a protected place for these solitary bees to lay eggs to reproduce, so that more pollinators can go to work.

The completed project also support the commitments required by the City of Santa Fe’s recent designation as a Bee City USA®.

You can visit the pollinator garden at Alvarado Park (2234 Calle Alvarado)!