With Honey in the Heart
The non-profit "wing" of BASE
Description
While this has been our passion project for many years, With Honey in the Heart became an official non-profit under the umbrella of the San Francisco Parks Alliance in 2015. The organization focuses on connecting people to their surrounding environment, educating about the benefits of pollinators, creating healthy habitat for all pollinators, and researching the impacts of the habitats we design & create.
Innovation Lab
Pollinators
Featured Work: Parklab Gardens
If you have strolled through the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco recently, you may have seen a curiously joyful pop-up park among all the new construction. After years of planning and months of construction, Parklab Gardens is up and running with a bevy of fun attractions including mini-golf at Stagecoach Greens, popular food trucks, and lawn games, all among floriferous pollinator gardens that circle the park.
In collaboration with Mission Bay Development Group, SPARK Social SF, and Hyphae Design Lab, WHITH began a multi-year effort to incorporate a pollinator-friendly meander into Parklab’s multi-block concept for interim collaborative, mixed-use community spaces. WHITH secured a Complete Neighborhood Grant from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development for the project and conducted community outreach events to facilitate discussion about the value of parks and pollinator habitat in this dense and diverse neighborhood.
With BASE’s design guidelines for Parklab Gardens, WHITH worked with community partners to facilitate sourcing of pesticide-free plants and lead workshops with the youth of Urban Sprouts to install all the plantings. Within days, we witnessed hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees of all types in the heart of one of San Francisco’s most urban districts.
client. Mission Bay Development Group
team. WHITH / BASE Landscape Architecture
year completed. 2018
Featured Talk: Designing for Pollinators
Patricia and Clay Bolt had a conversation on Designing for Pollinators, after virtual screening of the new PBS Nature documentary, My Garden of a Thousand Bees. Hosted by ASLA.
Featured Work: Pollinators Garden guide for kids
We created a guide for kids to teaching to design pollinator gardens in their environments.
Featured Work: Dolores Pollinator Boulevard
The grassy islands that divide Dolores Street are one of the most visible casualties of San Francisco’s drought. Withered brown patches have been spreading through the once lush medians since the city staunched their irrigation in an effort to conserve water. The solution seemed obvious – to tear out the thirsty turf and populate the medians with plants that have evolved to thrive under drier conditions. Enter the Pollinator Boulevard.
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BASE worked with the community and stakeholders to create a beautiful, drought tolerant pollinator garden in the first block of Dolores at Market Street. Widespread, careless use of pesticides in both urban and agricultural habitats have created an environment less hospitable to pollinators. We committed to combat these harsh conditions with carefully selected low water, pesticide-free, pollinator friendly plants that will bloom in an unbroken relay all year long. Vivid California Poppies, Sages, spiky Spider Aloe, and other bright, drought tolerant, and pollinator friendly plants can create a much needed habitat for our bees and pollinators.​
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We’ve started small, with the first block of Dolores at Market Street, but we’re dreaming big!!! We imagine the barren strips that run the rest of Dolores’ length full with plants and pollinators, a network of gardens wriggling its way over and through the San Francisco hills to wash the streets in sweet scents and shifting colors. We want this pollinator boulevard to become San Francisco’s pollinator neighborhood, connected to the new pollinator garden at Dolores Park and to all the school and church gardens along Dolores.
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Every other month we organize volunteer work days to maintain the medians -pull weeds, pruning some plants and planting new ones-, invite neighbors to take ownership of this place through art: origami, signs or chalk paintings, teach about plants and their pollinators, and dream with the transformation of the other medians into a pollinator paradise.
team. With Honey in My Heart
BASE Landscape Architecture
SF Community Challenge Grant Program
SF Department of Public Works
SF Parks Alliance
SF Street Parks Program
Mission Dolores Neighborhood Association
Whole Foods Market – Market Street
Prado Group
year completed. First Median: 2016
Second Median: 2017
Volunteer work: Ongoing
location. San Francisco, CA
Featured Work: Algarden Demonstration Urban Farm
Walking down the street and spotting an empty lot of weeds, Patricia saw nothing but potential, especially when she meet Giancarlo Muscardini, the site neighbor and permaculture expert.
This project was a full collaboration with Giancarlo Muscardini and Patricia Algara. In a few years, this vacant was transformed into a vibrant foodscape with two thriving bee hives, mushroom towers, and fruit trees. The garden also served as a base for teaching permaculture classes, and was used to host seasonal harvest lunches.
Patricia popularized the word Foodscaping to describe the art of combining landscape architecture with agriculture. The Algarden was part of a much greater fabric of values: localizing food production, cultivating a closer connection to our environment through the food that we eat, and teaching folks about permaculture and organic farming methods. The Algarden was truly a collaborative process: neighbors on the east own the land, neighbors on the west share water, and each month friends gather for a garden work party to pool efforts and reap the fruits of their labor.
team. Patricia Algara
Giancarlo Muscardini
year completed. 2008
location. Berkeley, CA
press. foodscaping blog
