Entry 01 · February 2026 A Safe Space for Community, Culture, and Now, Native Bees
There's a reason people keep coming back to WorldBeat Cultural Center. It isn't just the music, or the art, or the programming — though all of that is extraordinary. It's the feeling of the place. That rare, almost physical sense that you are welcome here. That this space was made with you in mind.
We thought about that a lot on the morning we showed up ready to grab some shovels.
How We Got There
Our first official site visit to WorldBeat didn't look like a typical assessment. There were no clipboards, no solo walkthrough, no quiet observation from a distance. Instead we arrived alongside a community of volunteers, ready to put plants in the ground together.
That morning's planting was organized by the San Diego Bird Alliance through their Native Plant Invasion program — a community conservation initiative led by Lucia, whose dedication to bringing people and native plants together across San Diego has quietly transformed corners of this city that most people pass without a second glance. Native Plant Invasion organizes planting events like this one throughout the region, doing the unglamorous, essential work of educating the public and restoring habitat one garden, one neighborhood, one shovelful at a time.
The volunteers who show up to these events, on sleepy weekend mornings, are the kind of people a city should be proud of.
O'Shun's Orchard came as participants , hands in the soil alongside neighbors, plant people, and community members who showed up because they care about this place. What we were also doing, quietly and simultaneously, was taking in everything the site had to tell us. The light. The layout. The energy of the space. Where people naturally gather. Where the soil breathes and where it doesn't.
Where WorldBeat Sits and Why It Matters
WorldBeat Cultural Center lives inside Balboa Park at 2100 Park Blvd — San Diego's most beloved urban park and, from an ecological standpoint, one of the most important habitat corridors in the county. The park connects canyon systems, coastal sage scrub remnants, and urban green space in ways that most of its millions of annual visitors never think about. But native bees do.
The WorldBeat grounds are already doing more ecological work than most people realize. The Healing Peace Garden, an established urban oasis featuring edible and medicinal plants. Holds the distinction of being the first sustainable, edible garden in all of Balboa Park. The site is a Certified Monarch Waystation. It holds a Certified Wildlife Habitat designation. There are outdoor classrooms, citizen science programs through Celebrate Urban Birds, summer camps, and community workshops happening here regularly.
In other words, this isn't a blank slate. It's a foundation.
What it hasn't yet been, in any formal or documented way, is a native bee sanctuary. That's what we're here to build and to bear witness to.
What We Planted
On that February morning, 18 native plant species went into the ground at WorldBeat, donated by San Diego Bird Alliance Native Plant Invasion and selected by Lucia and her team. Every one of them was chosen with purpose not just for beauty, but for they support the ecosystem, the bloom windows they fill, and the habitat functions they serve across different seasons. Many native plants serve numerous creatures and critters that help keep the ecosystem healthy. Our focus is native bees, but it also fits Bird Alliance mission of support native birds which are also vital.
A few highlights from what's now in the soil:
Cleveland Sage (Salvia clevelandii 'Pozo Blue') — One of the most valuable native bee plants in Southern California. Its tubular lavender-blue flowers are essentially designed for long-tongued bees, and digger bees, bumble bees, and carpenter bees will not be able to resist it once it blooms this spring.
Cedros Island Verbena (Verbena lilacina 'De la Mina') — A near-year-round bloomer in San Diego's mild climate. This plant is the closest thing to a "always open" resource we can offer bees between the bigger seasonal waves of bloom.
California Goldenrod (Solidago velutina ssp. californica) — The anchor of the fall planting. When almost everything else has finished, goldenrod holds the line for late-season bees , including bumble bee queens who need to fatten up before winter.
San Diego Sunflower (Bahiopsis laciniata) — Native specifically to San Diego County. Bright, fast-growing, and enormously attractive to long-horned bees, sweat bees, and leafcutter bees. This plant is a statement , a visual and ecological declaration that this garden belongs to this place.
California Sagebrush (Artemisia californica) — The silver-leafed backbone of coastal sage scrub. Its value isn't in its flowers, which are modest. Its value is in its presence, the structure, the cover, and the habitat it creates. Wool carder bees use its soft aromatic fibers to line their nests. It smells like home.
The remaining 13 species fill the bloom calendar from late winter through November, ensuring that from the moment early bumble bee queens emerge in February all the way to the last sweat bees of fall, something at WorldBeat is always open for business.
The Idea at the Center of All of This
WorldBeat has always been a sanctuary a word used deliberately here. A place where communities that are often pushed to the margins are centered, celebrated, and held. Where culture, music, and belonging are not amenities but the whole point.
A native bee sanctuary operates on the same logic. Most of the 650 to 700 native bee species found in San Diego County are solitary, quiet, and entirely overlooked. They don't make honey. They don't have hives. They don't sting unless you're actively trying to hurt them. They just need a place a patch of the right plants, a stretch of undisturbed ground, a little corner of the world that was made with them in mind.
That's what we're building here. A sanctuary within a sanctuary.
And we're just getting started.
What Comes Next
In March, a second phase of planting expands the habitat with hedgerow species including Manzanita and California Lilac — critical early bloomers that will support emerging queens and the first mining bees of the season. Bee condos, ground-nesting zones, and educational signage will follow, turning this space into an outdoor classroom that tells the story of native pollinators to every school group, workshop attendee, and curious passerby who wanders through.
Monitoring begins in earnest this spring. We'll be counting, photographing, and documenting everything that moves in.
Come back and watch with us.
O'Shun's Orchard LLC · Native Pollinator Habitat Consulting In partnership with SAVAGE BEE-CHES Follow this project to receive updates as the sanctuary grows.
