Our grassroots event at a certified wildlife habitat in Arcadia, California, combined beekeeping, tree planting, and citizen science to celebrate awareness campaigns for nature and conservation.
Four national and international awareness campaigns for nature and conservation all fall in the third week of May, including two UN-designated ones. Love A Tree Day takes place on May 16. World Bee Week runs May 16-22, climaxed by the UN-proclaimed World Bee Day on May 20, which promotes the protection of bees and other pollinators. The theme for World Bee Day 2026 is “Bee Together for People and the Planet – A Partnership That Sustains Us All,” focusing on the vital connection between healthy ecosystems and food security.
Outdoor Classroom Day falls on May 21, and the International Day for Biological Diversity, also a UN-proclaimed International Day, is observed on May 22 with its 2026 theme “Acting locally for global impact,” highlighting how individual and grassroots actions are essential to halting and reversing biodiversity loss.
With these four interrelated campaigns all taking place in the same period, and the 2026 themes for the two UN campaigns aligning with our thoughts as nature lovers and grassroots champions for conservation, we decided to hold a single local event, as in past years, to support and take part in them.
Arcadia Ecohome is a single-family property located in the foothill community of Arcadia, California, and its Microforest is a mini-forest of 500+ trees, densely planted and biodiverse, in the yards surrounding the house. It is a Certified Wildlife Habitat, Certified Pollinator Habitat, Certified Monarch Waystation, and Certified Bee Friendly Farm, by different nonprofits.
CIEDM stands for California Institute of Environmental Design & Management, which I established and operate as a grassroots entity that engages in education, research, and advocacy for environmental conservation, regeneration, and resilience. The event is structured around three key actions: beekeeping practices, tree planting, and educational campaigns, with citizen science as a major component. It is a private event attended by our families and invited friends, and the tree planting is assisted by our four-person gardening crew.
Southern California is a hotspot for bee biodiversity, hosting over 1,600 native bee species alone. It is therefore critical for us, as we celebrate the wave of the four awareness campaigns, to share our efforts in contributing to the Ecohome property’s hotspot literacy. As a bee enthusiast and a backyard grower of the Certified Bee Friendly Farm, I welcome all bees, native species or not. Given that Southern California is also home to an exceptionally resilient, locally adapted hybrid bee population, I’ve provided natural supports in the Microforest for all wild bees, including locally adapted honey bees.
Our urban beekeeping strategies to help all wild bees thrive include afforesting the home ground and maintaining the homegrown forest as the base structure for a pollinator habitat and bee oasis, creating and rewilding the pollinator-friendly landscapes with bio-diversified flowering plants, setting up bee baths near water sources, and leaving the habitat wild and pesticide-free, all together forming the resilient infrastructure to sustain beekeeping at this urban bee oasis.
On Bee Day 2026, we held a bioblitz walk around the forest to look for bees, pollinators, and other wildlife as part of our citizen science activities. During the same walk, we inspected the building eaves and porch ceilings around the house for any new beehives and filled the bee baths with fresh water. In addition, we carried out maintenance work at the Microforest’s Deadwood Garden for bees.
The Garden is designed and installed with standing dead tree branches and rotting logs on bare ground as a memorial of wind, heat, drought, and other climate damages on various trees grown in the forest, as a functional trellis for climbing tomato vines, as a shelter to house a variety of bee species, and as an outdoor setting to showcase repurposing deadwoods with new life in the ecosystems.
Our maintenance of the Deadwood Garden, or the “bee shelter,” extends the ecosystem services of deadwood for bees in several important ways. Deadwoods offer dwelling spaces for a number of local cavity-nesting bee species. About 30% of the native bee species are cavity nesters, meaning they lay their eggs in pre-existing holes in dead wood and hollow stems. It is critical to offer the Garden with safe spaces and facilities for the cavity nesters to nest.
On this Bee Day, we removed bee-threatening spider webs between dead branches at the Garden to support bee safety and our food security. The wipeout of spider webs also reduces the threat to an even larger group of bee species; roughly 70% of California’s native bee species are ground nesters.
These solitary pollinators dig individual burrows in bare, sunlit soil to raise their young. We removed weeds and cleared fallen leaves to ensure bare ground for a variety of ground nesters. We also built a homemade “Bee Hotel” with deadwood at the Garden on a previous Bee Day, and this time we inserted additional plant stems and tree twigs into the vacant hotel, remaining hopeful for our buzz guests to check in.
Planting new trees in the Microforest provides opportunities to introduce new species to the biodiverse forest, expand the forest’s capacity to capture and store carbon, heat, and water, produce food for humans and pollinators if they are fruit trees, and generate other ecosystem services for all. In this event, we transplanted two Pineapple Guava seedlings from a 15-gallon container to the backyard food forest, a part of the Ecohome Microforest. The seedlings are funded by the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District (Upper Water).
Two Pineapple Guava seedlings funded by Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District’s Residential Plant Voucher Program were planted on International Day for Biological Diversity, May 22, adding a new species to the microforest, which is drought-resistant, fire-resistant, and pollinator-friendly species to the biodiverse Microforest. Photo courtesy of Dr. Edward Huang.
Upper Water launched the region’s first-ever Residential Plant Voucher Program in 2019 for residents within its service area, including part of the City of Arcadia where the Ecohome is located. The key program objective is to incentivize residents to transform their landscapes with drought-tolerant plants and develop water-efficient gardening practices. I was approved as one of the qualified residents and received a voucher redeemable for up to $250 in approved plants to help transform the Microforest’s food forest into climate-appropriate, water-efficient landscapes.
Pineapple Guava is on the pre-approved list due to its California-friendly, drought- and fire-resistant qualities. Although native to South America, the species has been grown in Southern California since 1901 and is exceptionally well adapted to California’s Mediterranean climate. Based on our research, we found that they are also disease-resistant, meaning the trees can grow with resilience.
The species is highly ornamental, with springtime blooms that attract pollinators and showcase brilliant pink, white, red, and yellow hues. The showy, edible flowers add visual interest to the yard, please our eyes and spirits, and deepen our appreciation of nature. The fruit trees produce flowers and fruits to support local foods for all, including us, pollinators, and other beings. In Southern California, the species primarily attracts bees, hummingbirds, and insect-eating birds such as mockingbirds and scrub jays, which visit the plant to eat the flower petals, thereby facilitating pollination.
The tree planting was carried out ceremonially to celebrate the special days throughout the week. We moved the 15-gallon pot to the planting site to let the plant adjust to its surroundings, and we started site preparation on May 16 as part of our celebration of Love A Tree Day and the kickoff of World Bee Week.
We carried out an online educational campaign as part of the event program to raise public awareness of the four awareness campaigns and our supporting activities, hoping this awareness inspires others to act and sparks conversations with like-minded people.
The event was first announced on our Facebook page to reach our network and raise awareness of the campaigns and our actions. The event was also pre-registered as a publicly listed local event with the organizers of three awareness campaigns to share nationally and globally what we are doing: the Bee Day with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the Biodiversity Day with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Outdoor Classroom Day with Learning Through Landscapes.
Subject-matter expert comments were made on Facebook posts sharing our event programs. The postings were published around the mid to later part of May by organizations such as the Southern California Air Quality Management District calling on Love A Tree Day for planting California native trees to enhance air quality benefits, and by UN agencies and associated organizations including the UN Forum on Forests and the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Nature For All initiative, on the subjects of Bee Day and Biodiversity Day.
For citizen and community science, iNaturalist is an educational app for nature enthusiasts to identify nature creatures while turning submitted photos into valuable data for science and conservation. Observations were shared with the data platform and joined iNaturalist’s two timely projects: World Bee Day/Week 2026 and International Day for Biodiversity 2026. Observations for the two projects will be uploaded to the platform, and the data will be publicly shared with iNaturalist users.
Similarly, data has been shared with SciStarter and Project Noah, two additional citizen science platforms, and the event program was posted with them for public review. The event will conclude by submitting photos of the planted trees and our story to Upper Water and posting them on Upper Water’s Facebook page as part of the social media campaign.
