Chelsea Physic Garden



































































































































































































































Bee library & poemed beehive
for Chelsea Physic Garden

 

This April a new poemed beehive and 10 solitary bee book-nests were installed in the Chelsea Physic Garden. A longer blog will follow, with photographs documenting the installation. For now this sequence of poems, composed from the books that were converted into nests, is an introduction to the project.




THE ISLES
OF HONEY

britain



A HARVEST
RESOLUTION

St Bartholomew


Traditionally the last date for extracting honey
is 24 August, The Feast of St Bartholomew

Jane Charlton & Jane Newdick, A Taste of Honey







FORTUNE
SEEKING

peaches of pekin
tea of different qualities
the plant which furnishes rice paper
yellow-flowered camellia
the orange called Cum-Quat
the double yellow rose
& golden larch


Robert Fortune, later curator of the garden,
was charged by the Society to seek these
and other plants in China in 1843




GARLAND

fuchsia


Joseph banks carried the first fuchsia into Kew
on his head, so concerned was he to protect it




CUNT
LIPS

calyx


after Linnaeus

Andrea Wulf, The Bother Gardeners






THE GARDEN’S
BALLAST

rockery


Joseph Banks provided some lava for the
rockery at Chelsea Pysic garden,
brought from Iceland as ballast






b O e R e C h H i A v R e D s




JUST A WEE BIT
MORE ROOM

eke


Scottish innovation: an extra space added
to a skep, to ‘eke’ out more room in the
brood chamber.




L | A | N | G | S | T | R | O | T | H |


Reverend Lorenzo Langstroth of Philadelphia
devised a revolutionary hive with framed and
precise bee spaces, enabling their removal
without harming the bees.

Daniel Squire, The Bee-Kind Garden






THE
ULTIMATE
COLOUR

white


When the light is bright yellow is conspicuous,
but given conditions vary, Mace asserts that
white is the ‘ultimate goal’.




A STEP BEYOND
STARCH

sugar




MR STURGES
SPRING
STIMULUS

crocus

(grown near the hives)




UMBRAGEOUS
TINTS

lime




SWEET
SALTING

saltice

(sea lavender)




PURE
LIGHT
AMBER

thyme


Herbert Mace, Bees, Flowers & Fruit


bee nest; photo Ken Cockburn, 2014

In a workshop for children and young people, led by the poet Ken Cockburn, the group created a collaborative mesostic species list, cataloguing some of the flora in the garden that honeybees feed on.



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