Heritage Gate
Bee Hapus Community Garden

The Bee Hapus Community Garden is an exemplar public art commission for a residential development that has community engagement, social value and sustainability at its core.  Designed by Emma M. Price and artist-gardener Emma Geliot, the garden, a response to the current decline in the UK’s bee population, has transformed a redundant piece of land at the entrance to the Heritage Gate development into a garden that incorporates sculpture and functional works as well as providing a resource for both the local community and local wildlife.

The project started with a mail-out to Heritage Gate residents of the Friends of the Earth awareness raising Bee Saver Kit.  A local art competition was then held to design the garden’s stone centre-piece which was won by local resident Lily Mae Starkey.

The garden is a living artwork that provides a gateway to the development and a green space for solitary bees and pollinator insects as well as people.  It features a spiral, weathered steel-edged path alongside plants which have been selected to cope with tough weather conditions and, more specifically, to attract a wide range of insects, particularly bees.  The provision of nest sites for solitary bees, drinking stations and plants that provide materials for nest building by Carder bees, has all been central to the design.  

Local volunteers participated in planting the garden alongside lead artist-gardener Emma Geliot and artist Roger Lougher.  Several events focused on the garden have taken place to bring the community together, including Q&As with the artists, a reading by Welsh writer Rae Howells from her poetry collection The Language of Bees, and a talk on all things bees by academic Professor Les Baillie.

The Bee Hapus Community Garden was produced by Studio Response on behalf of Persimmon Homes and the Vale of Glamorgan Council. Funding for this commission has been secured through a Section 106 agreement for the Heritage Gate residential site.

Emma M Price worked with Healer Surveys on the path’s design, which was fabricated and installed by specialists Art Fabrications.  The garden’s stone centre-piece was produced and installed by Cardiff-based company Stone Sign.

All images courtesy of Studio Response.