BY MICHELE RUSSELL
OCEANFRONT — Last month, artist Heather Beardsley installed a “bee hotel” in the Mediterranean Avenue Parklet and Butterfly Garden between an apartment building and a café in the Vibe Creative District.
Situated in what was a narrow, unused alley, the vibrant garden lures pollinators of all kinds as well as residents of and visitors to the Vibe, the bustling, arts-focused district near the Oceanfront. In the Vibe, commercial and residential uses mix with a range of public art projects.
The public garden features bee-friendly flowers, uplifting murals, and sturdy benches. And now it also features the bee hotel sculpture, entitled “Vacancy.”
The bee hotel is one of eight sculptures by Beardsley commissioned by the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art.
Additionally, she now has an exhibition of her work at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk.
“Caring for green spaces and nature in our cities actually helps us,” said Beardsley, who lives in the Salem area, during a recent visit to the garden to see her work. “We’re trying to do what’s best for us as well as the bees.”
The sculpture is, at first look, unassuming – an actual oak log, peeled and sanded, but rubbed with tung oil so it is the same color as the square fence post where it perches vertically.
Twelve black carpenter bee-sized drilled holes run from the log’s top to bottom. Beardsley affixed to it tiny red ceramic bricks, a hint of Virginia architecture to remind people we are all a part of a natural community.
A computer scan code for tourists to learn more hangs on the post. Only a month old, some of the hotel’s little ports are already filled with eggs and plugged shut by the protective bees who make neither hives nor honey.
Beyond the bee hotel is a promenade of orange and red zinnias, purple butterfly bushes and yellow black-eyed Susans, accentuated with white dusty millers.
Brenda Keller, who lives in the apartments next door, sat on one of the benches with her dog Teddy Bear, a pomchi. Volunteers built the butterfly garden when she moved in five years ago, and still maintain it. She and Teddy Bear watch its metamorphosis.
The garden was built in a very narrow strip of unused city land between Java Surf Café & Espresso Bar and some dilapidated housing that was torn down in 2018 and replaced with upscale affordable housing, Seaside Harbor Apartments. Today the apartments are co-owned by The Lawson Companies, the builder, and Samaritan House, a nonprofit shelter and transitional housing provider.
Since 2019, community partners in the Vibe have been searching city maps for such underutilized pockets to landscape and give people a place to “pause, relax and reflect,” according to the district’s website.
The group would also find odd shaped, untended parcels by driving around looking for them, said Kate Pittman, executive director of the Vibe Creative District.
“Sometimes we’d just stop and ask, who owns that right there?” she said.
The partners include the Vibe, the city, Lynnhaven River Now and Orbis Landscape.
Before landscaping, the partners ask permission of whoever owns the land, promising to plant and maintain attractive native plants and install works of art, for free, with no strings attached.
At any time, the city or the private owners may take back their land.
From those pockets of land, 10 small walkable parks now make up a popular two-mile walking or driving tour.
Thanks to the scan codes, visitors can learn about the volunteers, charities and philanthropists who partnered to support these gardens.
Beardsley said she hopes her bee hotels will encourage carpenter and other solitary bees who do not build hives to stick around awhile and continue to pollinate the small park’s flora.
Learn more about the Vibe Creative District online. Learn more about Beardsley and her work online via heatherbeardsley.com. Her exhibition, “Strange Plants,” is on view in the Frank Photography Gallery at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk until Sunday, Oct. 29. An exhibition page is available online at the Chrysler Museum website.