By Heidi Bornhorst 

A prestigious Horticulture group is coming to Hawaii for a weeklong conference.

The American Society for Horticulture Science will be here on Oahu for a week long conference beginning Monday September 23, 2024, closing on Friday September 27.

Over one thousand attendees are signed up and registration is still open. (1067) at last count.

This is great for Hawaii gardeners, Horticulturists, Botanists, and plant scientists.

The conference will be held at the Hilton HawaiianVillage hotel, right on the beach in beautiful Waikiki.

Renowned for its extensive gardens, featuring many native Hawaiian plants, along with canoe plants and tropical exotics, it is a great venue for these plant loving scientists to enjoy.

The Hilton is also right next to the Hale Koa Hotel (where I served for over 10 years as Landscape Director).

The extensive landscaped grounds of the Hale Koa were designed as a botanical garden and the plantings there are very impressive and worth a stroll.

There are many wonderful gardens in Waikiki, amidst all of the hotels and high-rises.

I was very honored to be invited to be the keynote speaker for this conference and I plan to be talking about my favorite: Growing native Hawaiian plants.

There are over one thousand native Hawaiian plant species, and we now are growing about 100 of these Hawaiian plant species. We can grow more!

We have 1367 native Hawaiian plant species. Over 90% of them are endemic, meaning they only grow naturally here in Hawaii. About 9% of them are extinct, and many are rare and endangered.

Some are common and easy to grow, and we see them all around. Examples are: Hala, beach naupaka, `ilima, Hapu`u or Hawaiian tree ferns, and Kou and Milo trees.

Other native plants are less common in our gardens and landscape, but horticulturists are working to change that.

​My friend, Dr. Mike Opgenorth, who is the Director of Kahanu Botanic Garden in Hana, Maui will be speaking on Thursday about his PhD work on our endangered native Hawaiian Gardenias 

Many more students and graduate student at the U.H. are studying how to grow and perpetuate native Hawaiian plants.

The landscape or “Green industry” here in Hawaii is doing the groundwork with native plants.

Home gardens now feature native Hawaiian plants especially those loved by lei makers such as `Ohi`a lehua, `ilima, Palapalai and Pala`a ferns, and our native fragrant Hawaiian white Hibiscus, Koki`o ke`o ke`o.

Our public parks and urban forests are growing more native plants too.

Let’s learn and grow more, let’s perpetuate our native Hawaiian plants together.

https://ashs.org/page/ASHSAnnualConference