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 Catherine visited the Bee Cafe in Elmhurst Park, Woodbridge to give the Bee Cafe team of volunteers and cafe 'adopters' tips and advice on plant care for the wide variety of bee-friendly plants.
Regular deadheading in the right way for each plant, will encourage many of the perennials and annuals to flower - and feed the bees - for as long as possible!  Introducing the new ‘Bee Cafe’ artwork. A series of bee cafe location maps are to be sited at each main bee cafe station, showing the Woodbridge Bee Pass-Wildlife corridors. Commissioned by Paul for Bee Cafe CIC, the artwork has been created by artist Angela supported by Catherine, our Communications guru. Individual versions of the maps will be created and displayed on each Bee Cafe - look out for them!  Radio Suffolk's Luke Deal took a trip to the original Bee Cafe at Great Bealings to learn all about the project.
Listen to him chatting to Paul Martin: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0jdqmgp The informative and interesting interview starts at 1hr 22!  The Bee Cafe project is all about recycling ... and that even includes the plants! With the spring flowers now dormant they have been swapped out of the Bee Cafe planters to make room for the summer planting. But no trip to the compost bin for them! Thanks to local Cubs and other volunteers they have a new permanant home along part of the Sandlings Walk on Martlesham Heath. As the Bee Cafe project continues over the years the aim is for as many plants as possible to get replanted elsewhere once they have served their purposes in the planters, to make the pollinator corridors even bigger and better!
For more photos head to our News page! Find out more about Bee Cafes on the Gt Bealings Climate Emergency Rapid Response Squad page - click here 
Want to make your own bee-friendly hanging baskets and patio pots? The following plants fit the bill, provided you avoid varieties with frilly flowers.
Perfect for Pollinators plants used by us in the Bee Cafes include:
Perfect for Pollinator plants used in the raised beds include:
  Inspired by our work with the Gt Bealings Climate Emergency Rapid Response Squad we are placing two mock-up Bee Cafes at the heart of our display at the Suffolk Show this year!
These will of course be filled with bee-friendly blooms, but we are going to go a step further and make sure every single plant we use in the display is Perfect for Pollinators! This includes all the hanging basket plants, the perennials, herbs, alpines, annuals and shrubs. The RHS has very helpful lists highlighting the best plants to choose: click here to view them. For bee-friendly patio & basket plants click here to see our list.
With the Bee Cafes swapped over to the summer menu, the spring plants were needing a new home. Step forward the Martlesham Heath Bee Café Planting Area!
A team of Martlesham Heath Householders volunteers, including Lisa Calver of Aspect Garden Solutions, put in some hard graft to clear the site between Sandlings Walk & The Control Tower, Martlesham Heath ready for the pollinator-friendly planting. All of the perennials used in the spring Bee Cafes will be replanted at the site on 8th June, with help from local Cubs who will be earning their Gardening Badges! The bulbs will be stored and it is hoped they can be reused in the Cafe Planters next spring.
Woodbridge's Bee Cafes are now in place, but there are plenty more projects in the pipeline!
We need around 600 used 2 litre clear plastic bottles to serve as plant pots in the other Bee Cafes planned. If you have any please bring them into the nursery on your next visit and drop them off at the donation station by the till. It was very wet weather for the official opening of Woodbridge's Bee Cafes but being hardy sorts, several of the Katie's Garden team joined Paul Martin, Woodbridge mayor Eamonn O'Nolan and volunteers this morning. Several involved parties, including Katie's Garden's Susie Davis, were interviewed inside Shires Hall for upcoming videos, the mayor read a poem about treasuring our pollinators, and it was a quick trip out on to Market Hill to cut the ribbon. Not too many bees in the pouring rain but we are sure they will come! You can read about the opening on the BBC's News website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-68428336 Hear Paul Martin chat to Rob Dunger about the project on the Suffolk Sound website. The interview aired at 8am this morning: https://suffolksound.orwelltech.co.uk/rob-dunger-in-the-morning-friday-8-10/
The plants have been growing on well since the volunteer planting day, and it is now time for the Bee Cafes to leave the Katie's Garden nursery for their new homes across Woodbridge.
The 10 stations will get set up across the week with official launch day with the mayor on Friday 1st March - the first day of spring!
Some of the volunteers from the planting-up day at Katies's Garden on 31st January tell Caroline why they got involved.
Katie's Garden owner Susie Davis talks Caroline through the plants selected for the spring Bee Cafes.
Paul talks Caroline through how the Bee Cafes are constructed, and how the clever watering systems in them work to make maximum use of rainfall.
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