You may not know about Lavandula "Goodwin Creek Gray" but the honey bees do.

They love lavender.

That's one of the plants selected for the Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden being implemented near the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis.

The Goodwin Creek Gray, a cross between Lavandula dentata and Lavandula lanata is a hearty plant with lavender floral spikes and silvery-gray, sawtoothed leaves.

Ground preparation is under way, and the project should be completed and open to the public by Oct. 16.

A Sausalito team (landscape architects Ann Baker and Donald Sibbett, interpretative planner Jessica Brainard, and exhibit designer Chika Kurotaki) submitted the winning design (online).

The garden will provide a year-around food source for honey bees and create awareness for the plight of the honey bee. Visitors can glean ideas for their own bee friendly gardens.

The plants will include such bee favorites as lavender, sage, tower of jewels, swamp sunflower, catmint, angelica, clover, California buckwheat, California honeysuckle, woodbine honeysuckle, passionflower vine, globe thistle, coral bells, dwarf plumbago, dwarf oregano, purple dome aster, Mexican daisy, silver carpet aster, deer weed and mother of thyme.

With such a smorgasbord to choose from, it will be interesting to see which blossoms the bees go to first.

I'm betting on four: lavender, sage, catmint and tower of jewels.