Saualito team wins garden design award

on Tuesday,March 10,2009 20:03

Sibbett Group has won an international contest for the best honey bee haven garden design.

The winning team - lead by landscape architects Donald Sibbett and Ann F. Baker - created a series of interconnected gardens as part of the design submitted to a contest sponsored by the Haagen-Dazs brand.

Haagen Dazs will use the design as the basis for a garden, which will be erected this summer on a half-acre site at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility as a gift from the company.

One of the main goals of the garden is to provide bees with a year-round food source, raise public awareness about the plight of honey bees and encourage visitors to plant bee-friendly gardens.

"The winning design fits beautifully with the campus mission of education and outreach, and it will tremendously benefit our honey bees at Bee Biology," says Lynn Kimsey, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.

"The garden will be a campus destination," she says.

Sibbett''s design also aimed to achieve superior visitor experience. The four interconnected gardens form the "physical and interpretive framework for [the] design," with a series of trails connecting the gardens.

Each garden also features gathering spaces serving as focal points for guided tours, facilitated programs and interaction with beekeepers and entomologists, according to the team.