Naupaka is such a simple and elegant native Hawaiian plant to grow in beach gardens, xeriscapes, and to nurture in the wild.
It makes a great hedge, or specimen plant. It protects our coast and holds onto the sand. You can also grow it in large pots.
Naupaka is a less thirsty plant, perfect for your xeriscape garden. It is also salt and wind tolerant.
Grow it from seeds or cuttings or buy some potted ones and support your favorite local nursery.
Strategic landscape designed naupaka hedges can protect beach homes from the strong ehukai, salty winds.
It is beautiful with its soft green leaves and half flowers which are white with a hint of purple. White fruit follow the flowers.
Beach Naupaka, Naupaka kahakai is known as Scaevola taccada to scientists.
It is an indigenous Hawaiian plant, which means it got here on its own, but it grows in other tropical areas too.
We also have native endemic species of Scaevola, Naupaka kuahiwi that inhabit our uplands. They too have a half flower, which features in Hawaiian love legends.
It is the easiest plant to care for if we keep it simple:
• Minimal water once established.
• No fertilizer.
• Keep turf grass away from the root zone.
• Minimal trimming, and only by hand.
As with many of our native Hawaiian plants, modern ‘mow blow and go’ landscape techniques do not agree with naupaka.
The worst is gas powered hedge trimmers, this will mutilate naupaka. Do minimal trimming and shaping with hand clippers or loppers.
Do not TOP naupaka. Prune carefully, and minimally and only when you are in a good mood.
Topping is where you mindlessly cut trees or plants.
The new growth is soft, and the older branches are very woody and tough.
Power equipment trimming shakes up the roots and then makes the branches grow too dense, making habitat for insect and disease pests.
Turf grass should be physically separated from the Naupaka planting area. Use a nice stone, coral, or brick edging to keep grass and naupaka separated.
Hand weed out any invading grass. Grass will compete and rob water, nutrients, light and space from the naupaka.
An edge also makes it easier to mow the lawn.
Thoughtful Landscape design and old fashioned garden maintenance will help you keep your naupaka thriving and Beautiful, as nature designed.
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.
Ren MacDonald-Balasia of RENKO did a Floral demo with the GCH on Wed March 13, 2024.
She likes to use wild, weird and foraged florals, and rare, strange fruit from gardens or Chinatown.
RENKO Floral dragon
This was such an inspiration! We can all gather florals and foliage from our own gardens, from friends and even from wild weeds. Weeds can be beautiful.
We don’t have to import florals. Imported materials have a Carbon footprint big time. They also can be the source of harmful alien pests and diseases.
Many imported florals (e.g. roses without perfume) can last a long time, yet they are substantially dosed with chemical poisons insecticides and fungicides. Since they are not a food crop, they are not heavily regulated.
Some countries which grow imported florals don’t have the chemical safety regulations that we do, and this poisons the growers and us the consumers.
Read the Book Floral Confidential, if you really want to be informed (and Scared!) by this overuse of toxic chemicals.
And as we say: Buy Local! Or even better, Forage Locally. Glean from Local gardens.
The Floral event was at the Halekulani, and I invited my siter Mimi Bornhorst Gaddis.
As we were getting ready to go, my honey Clark Leavitt said, ‘set me up with a lei needle?’
He had gone on the roof and foraged for pua keni keni. So romantic. Our anniversary was the day before and he took his nephew Mark to lunch at Kailua Nico’s.
Mimi and I used the valet service at the Halekulani and walked through the flower filled lobby.
Two women were sitting in an alcove stringing Blue jade lei. “Wow kewl Blue jade!’ I remarked as we walked by (it turned out that these women were our speaker and her helper!)
We went to check in at the Garden Club desk, and as there was no usual flowers on second floor lobby, we walked around.
There was a woman sitting on a bench. Mimi and I introduced out selves and I gave her a tiare li`I li`i.
Her name was Pam and turns out she’s Ren’s mother, just home to care for her 97-year-oldmother who was a journalist for the star Bulletin.
The first AJA writer in Hawaii!
Soon the floral fun begins.
The first arrangement is in a wide tall bowl. She puts in what she called sea tamarind. We were in back and it was hard to see but I’m thinking that doesn’t look like tamarind. I kept trying to figure out what the orange bouncy floral might be. (Turnsout Harpulia, a common street tree in the Lychee family, Sapindaceae.
sterculia Mexican creeper lei Ohai Ali`i Harpulia AKA sea tamarind
She anchors the branches into folded up chicken wire set in the bowl. (Oasis is environmentally out. Mimi and I both have some stashed, just in case)
She then added Sterculia, Skunk tree pods, these are heavy and help to weight the other materials down.
Ixora is added. We got these at a gas station, Ren remarks.
Mexican creeper, which used to grow in our Makiki garden is draped all around. She calls it coral vine.
Bombax or shaving brush tree flowers like big puffs of pink added to the flora mix, next the lei she bought at Cindy’s Lei in Chinatown are added, ohai alii and a golden hala. She cuts and drapes and winds them into the arrangement.
Blue jade lei were added and draped over the arrangement. Such a lovely seasonal Spring beauty from Hawaii gardens!
blue jade and tita Mimi
She scouted for wonderful and strange fruit in Chinatown markets:
Fruiting Clusters of Longan, rambutan and Salak palm. Mimi said that they call it SALAT in SE Asia and it’s really ono. Pretty and scaly in an arrangement.
She had some nice blooming orchid plants that she bought from Kawamoto orchids in Palolo Valley. We kind of gasped when she cut the floral stems and put them in the arrangement. (they would last for a month or more on the plant). But this is what florists do for that wonderful Ephemeral special occasion.
CONSERVATION: instead of imported, chemically laden treated florals these were gathered in gardens in wild places and in local lei shops.
Such a good message we can get so much from our own Hawaii GARDENS!
The first time I saw the real native name, I went no, WAY too hard to say! But learning to spell Latin names is not that much easier. So maybe we should practice using the real name.
Break it down and it’s easier to say. Write it and your brain will remember it.
It is pronounced: Kwet La sho Chel
Sing it! Let’s try and remember and use it.
Just like we respectfully use, and properly pronounce ohelo Hawai’i words, we probably shouldlearn to use the real name.
Not only is it a seasonal festive plant for us (and a big production for our nursery growers), starting in Hawaii about June with little plugs, it is a very special and significant plant in its native Mexico and Central America.
Red is original color, and many new variations now exist. I like the new colors for their novelty, but the rich red is so seasonal and joyous.
In Mexico they were symbolic and were also used for medicine (A special recipe induced breast milk). they are not as poisonous as some rumors suggest. Red and purple fabric dyes come from the colorful. bracts.
The “flowers” we see so brightly are actually bracts, modified leaves. The true flowers are yellow and green and are nestled in the center of the bracts.
For the past few years, I have been buying them from the UH Manoa Horticulture club, to help support and encourage students in the fine art of intensely growing and studying plants.
I love going up to Manoa to buy them and then sharing this growing gift with family, friends, and neighbors.
We also have the old-fashioned hedge type of Cuetlaxochitl in some Hawaii gardens. They are becoming a more rare plant to see. In Foster Village, where my husband grew up, we’d love to see all the pretty tall plants growing in gardens as we drove out to visit his folks. A particular house had green walls and it was so striking to see the plants growing there.
If you see one like this, you might ask the gardener for a cutting to grow. This is not among varieties growers produce today. This hedge type one is more of a perennial and will grow and bloom every year.
Who remembers the old hedge that the Board of Water supply grew along the Pali Highway in Nuuanu?
For many of us this was the true sign of the season.
These seasonal flowers can last for months if you treat them right. They like light but not baking sunlight. Water them about once a week. Take off any decorative foil. Fill the pot with water and let it drain all the way out. Then put it back with your other Holiday decorations. They may last and stay red all the way to April!
An old gardener trick is to trim them back in the A months, April, and August. This holds true more for the hedge type.
Although I keep them alive a full year, these newer cultivars don’t look great. Nurseries use all kinds of special fertilizer and lighting to get them looking so pretty and perfect.
DÉCOR! Brightens up a gloomy rainy day. Lights, trees, poinsettias it’s as simple or as complex as you want to make it.
Decorating with, and gifting plants and flowers is fun for gardeners and the plant lovers on our lists. I started looking around my garden for what I can give to whom and totally “Shop Local”. I Love to check out local garden shops for living plant gifts.
POINSETTIAS can last a long time in a pot if you water them correctly. Once a week carry the pot to the sink (take off the foil) run water and soak the planting media, let it drain and then put it back in its decorative spot.
If you have the old fashioned hedge type Poinsettia growing outside KEEP it! Grow it, and share it, so can perpetuate this kama’aina classic. These are different from the ones the nurseries grow today.
WHITE POINSETTIEA or Euphorbia leucocephala is another outdoor hedge plant that is gorgeous and fragrant! It has many fun common names like Snow on the mountain, Puno puno, Flor de Nino, White-laced Euphorbia, Snowflake Euphorbia, Pascuita, Snows of Kilimanjaro, and Little Christmas Flower. Sometimes you can find this in pots as well, but it really is most glorious grown in the ground.
LIPSTICK PLANT OR ACHIOTE this old fashioned kama’aina favorite comes in at least three colors: red, super bright red (my fave) and yellow. The fuzzy pods are attractive when fairly young and they keep well as a cut flower arrangement. The more mature ones are good in a dry arrangement, and most fun of all are the red coated seeds. You can make achiote oil for making true Spanish rice and other gourmet treats. Rather than red food coloring or other dyes, grow and use the real thing. Easy to grow from seeds, cuttings or buy a plant at your favorite nursery. You can see all of the colors at Ho’omaluhia Botanic Garden; they grown on the trail heading down to the lake, Waimaluhia, from the visitors’ center.
KALAMANSI AND TANGERINES both fruit at this time of year and the trees are so pretty and festive. I especially love kalamansi for smaller gardens and for versatility in cooking, from drinks, to fish marinades to that special acidic citric touch in salad dressings.
NORFOLK or Cook pines can be grown in pots or in your yard. They don’t smell like the mainland ones but they don’t risk importing any new noxious alien pests either and you can get them for free. They also stay green for months and you can treat them like a houseplant for months (if you like!) and as my Mom says, “No needles on the floor!”
Orchids are so decorative and make the best gifts. Water them like you do Poinsettias.
Q: my Gardenias are blooming a lot right now! I even put some of the dead brown flowers back around the plant, like mulch.
That’s the right thing to do, right Heidi?
Mahalo Debbie Azama Park
(Our fave Yoga teacher)
A; Brief answer: the spent flowers are good for mulch if they are pest free. Leafy mulch is also greatly beneficial for Gardenias.
Gardenias are called KIELE in Hawaiian.
They came to us from tropical China. The scientific name is Gardenia chinensis. They are in the RUBIACEAE plant family.
Did you know that there are over 200 species of Gardenias in the world?
Gardenias are easy to grow and bloom if you follow a few basics:
• Grow them in full sun.
• Pick every flower.
• Use soapy water to control ants and other insect pests.
• Cut long stems with blossoms if your plant is tall and flourishing!
• Cut the stems in the right place!
• Water!
• Shoot the undersides of the leaves to rinse off pests.
• Foliar fertilizer
• MirAcid
The more sun the better, for Gardenias and most flowering plants. Study your sun and shade patterns and try to find the sunniest spot. Wind is good too. Air circulation helps get CO2 to the leaves of the plants and helps reduce insect pests.
You will have way fewer pest insects: thrips, aphids, scale, if you pick every blossom, look for a swirl of white on the green fat kiele bud, that’s the time to get your clippers and cut the bud and some stem.
Put that bud with stem, right into a vase of cool water.
If you see any pests on the buds or flowers, rinse them gently at the sink. If the pests are stubborn or plentiful, squirt some dish soap (1-2 drops) in some water and swirl it around, rinse off the pests.
Soapy water for the plant pests outside one tablespoon per gallon.
You can use a pump sprayer or handheld spray bottle. Spray the soapy solution onto the leaves and young stems, get the undersides of leaves, as that is often where the pests seek shelter and hide.
Leave the soap to sit on the leaves for at least an hour.
You can then rinse the leaves and shoot off the now smothered and dead pests and rinse the sooty mold off of the leaves. Or you can just leave the soapy residue on the plants.
If you really want clean shiny Gardenia leaves, take a soft rag, dip that in the soapy solution and rub off the sooty mold and any insects or their eggs.
Watering and rinsing, like a strong windy rainstorm would do, is a great way to keep your plants healthy and pest free.
Observing while watering is also good; look for any buds coming along, and think about the best place to cut the stem to enjoy the blooms (and Fragrance!) inside your home.
GARDENIA Basics: THEY LIKE RICH, ACID SOIL, RED DIRT MIXED WITH GOOD LEAFY COMPOST. DIG OUT THE GRASS AND TOPDRESS WITH GOOD SOIL, MAKE AN EDGE TO THE PLANTER BED LIKE FLUSH BRICKS OR STONE, AND THEN JUST MOW AROUND THE BIG EDGE. KEEP THE GARDENIAS WEED FREE.No grass next to the stem.
Make a good soil zone area for the Gardenia roots with no competition from turf grass.
Gardenias also will bloom more if you fertilize with MirAcid. It’s the miracle gro in a blue box. If you fertilize with this each time you water, or at least a month or two before the main blooming season in May in Hawaii, you will get lots of lovely gardenia blossoms.
I asked my friend and great Gardener, Mari who lives Mauka of Sunset beach how bad the shoreline erosion was, and can she access her beach?
NO, she said sadly, It’s still blocked off and there is a steep Cliff, and dangerous drop off, it is too dangerous to walk down to Sunset Beach or Kammieland.
Plus, she continues, there’s so much beach litter and trash everywhere that are a result of “temporary” sandbag burritos and black saran shade cloth.
Along with the liter there are multiple safety issues including rebar, concrete and other structural debris from coastal houses. These houses are now too close to our North shore surf swells, breaking waves and high tides.
BUT, says Mari, there is one upside to this trash and mis-use of our public beach.
My friends and I gather up the black matting erosion control debris that is floating in the ocean. (And yes, its very heavy when waterlogged).
What do you do with it then? We dry it out and SOLARIZE a most hated weed. You know that Asparagus pokey groundcover? Or sometimes called Asparagus Fern?
Asparagus “fern” is not a fern, Asparagus sprengeri is actually in the Lily family and is related ot our edible asparagus. It is very pokey, and if it pokes your bare gloveless hands, it’s kind of toxic.
I used to favor it for landscaping because it is extremely tough, xeric, and a good ground cover in a dry neglected garden.
But as a maintenance gardener I HATE it! Its pokey and the pokes from the minute thorns on the stems, can get infected. (remember to put on your garden gloves!) It has underground storage tubers, like little potatoes that make it a drought tolerant survivor plant and also Supremely difficult to eradicate.
You can dig and dig it out, but if one small tuber is left behind, Auwe! It will all sprout up again.
And it has RED FRUIT, with several black seeds inside. Birds love to find and eat red fruit and then they poop out the seeds everywhere.
AN ALL AROUND PESTY PLANT !!
We were talking about the wave erosion, high tides and overly heated water, and global warming change to north shore and illegals things people are doing..
How’s about the guy pouring concrete and rebar on the beach? Didn’t someone see it and report the Concrete Company?! Really unfortunate and unsafe issues here. Something needs to be done to save our beaches and Kai for everyone. Hard to watch.
Though there are many things we cannot control, the reuse of this beach trash to help eliminate a weedy plant in the garden, this is AKAMAI!
SOLARAZATION is a great way to control weeds without using dangerous chemical herbicides.
Often we use layers of wet newspaper, cardboard or even carpet to smother and solarize weeds, and turf grass where we don’t want it etc. Then after the weeds are safely killed, you can peel them away, restore the soil, and plant useful plants in place of alien weeds.
The black saran or shade cloth which some use as weed controlling ground cover, or in this case to slow down the power of wave erosion, can be used to solarize and kill weeds in our gardens.
This a beach clean up with a purpose!
Mahalo to Mari and her North shore friends who help clean our beaches and then grow good productive gardens.
My friend Lexi Hada contacted me about a volunteer opportunity. When Lexi calls you know it’s going to be a FUN and interesting time!
We joined some fellow volunteers, including some famous Lei makers at 9:00 a.m. at Linekona.
Lexi and Kaylee
I was so impressed with the Volunteers and staff joining with the Artist Rebecca Loise Law and her bouncy fun entertaining husband Andy.
Just being in Linekona is a gift and it brings back memories of other art projects, Classes in Art, wood shows, teaching and learning moments with art and our Honolulu Community.
Rebecca and Andy had asked for flowers which they would dry (in an upstairs room with newspapers spreadout on the floor)
We had brought big bags of floral gifts, tasty treats, and lei that we made to share from our gardens.
The Laws and HoMA worked with the Honolulu Botanical Gardens for a collection of great florals from Foster and Koko Crater Botanical gardens, including Quipo, which is a huge, stout trunked tree from South America, and is related to the African Baobab. The big, winged seeds of the Quipo which we’ve used as intriguing decorations over the years were strung into giant lei for the Awakening art show.
Cup and saucer plant on copper wire for exciting art show Awakening
We were given various dried flowers to work with:
Phalaenopsis orchids
RAINBOW SHOWER flowers
Cup and saucer
Cook pine needles
Sandpaper vine
Strands of super fine copper wire is used for stringing. We would carefully poke through the flower, like using a lei needle, or wrap the plant material with the fine wire. We spaced out the flowers by making an artful twist in the wire.
Sandpaper Vine
It sounds tedious but the time passed quickly, it was fun to learn a new style, which I likened to Lei making. Andy Law (husband of the artist) came bouncing into the room, and talked to us about the process, Life and gardens in England, Wales, and Scotland.
Three hours sounded like a long time to volunteer but Andy kept us entertained and the process was fascinating. I was so busy crafting and learning, visiting with the other volunteers and seeing their workmanship, that time flew by.
I congratulate the Honolulu Museum of Art staff for nurturing us volunteers; from free parking, snacks, and working together on such an engaging Floral Art project. There were several staffers to greet and orient us volunteers and Volunteer coordinator Kaylee Clark stayed with us in our lei making session, encouraging us, and sharing about art exhibits and other events at the Museum.
Clark stayed with us in our lei making session, encouraging us, and sharing about art exhibits and other events at the Museum.
Awakening is a year long exhibit in the upstairs L-wing. The Laws have produced these kinds of floral exhibits and art work previously but this is the first time in Hawaii. They brought dried materials and continued the process of gathering and drying flowers from Hawaii.
The main volunteer tasks for this project were cutting and bending of wire along with stinging of flowers. Flower donations came from volunteers. Flowers used each day varied on availability. The process was collecting, drying, and then a 3-day freeze. HoMA tried to keep each day different, as there were a lot of repeat volunteers and they wanted to keep the experience new and interesting. Approximately 250 Volunteers helped from August 16- September 16, 2022.
Andy and Rebecca arrived in Hawaii in early August 2022 and will stay and coordinate the assembly and opening of the art exhibit, which will be up for a year to enjoy.
They have had similar floral exhibits all over the world, including England.
Artful friends Marin Philipson, Debbie Choo, and Patty Mowat joined Lexi and me.
Amazing long time and Awesome lei makers Joyce Spoehr a HBG Retiree and active volunteer, Iris Fukunaga who still works at HBG (Honolulu Botanic gardens) and Dyanne Taylor a Master lei maker, famous for her tiare bud lei, is another City Parks and Recreation retiree(and fellow surfer) who Volunteers at all the fun plant and lei events. My Friend and great gardener Rosemary was there too. It was so fun to have the master craftswomen there, as we all learned this new technique.
I had so much fun making my lei, first with Phaleonopsis or Butterfly Orchids, then one with red cup and saucer and then with the Lavender cup and saucer. I had never noticed before, working with this as a fresh floral, the different shapes of the dried petals.
Loved the garlic vine flowers for a strand too. This is an old fashioned kama`aina plant that we do not see too often these days. I love the striking lavender color when it is fresh, and it dries very nicely. Seems like the petals are tough enough to hold up
As we completed each long strand (sixty inches measured by the length of our worktables), the lei strands were gently laid into big, long floral boxes, with the layers separated by tissue paper.
The process, of drying the flowers first was something like how botanists and taxonomists, like at the Bishop Museum or National Tropical Botanical Gardens, or even Kew Gardens in the U.K. make dried Herbarium specimens of plants to document and study.
Such a process and so many Na lima Kokua (helping hands) putting the art exhibit together.
As we were wrapping up, the artist herself joined us and we bedecked her with lei and floral gifts. Slender and dressed in black, Rebecca Louise Law looked amazing and happy with our floral adornments. She spoke a few quiet words thanking us.
Rebecca Louise and Andy Law
I thought about what a wonderful team she and her husband Andy make, him warm and bouncy and super enthusiastic, and she reserved and artistic.
Another amazing thing that happened was that the Director of the museum, Halona Norton-Westbrook, joined us to say mahalo, and spoke briefly with us volunteers.
I was talking with my neighbors on their sunset stroll and found that Julia Weiting was also volunteering. Every time she went, they gave her different florals to work with.
I was so inspired after about what I could make next! I also thought a lot about the process and which other flowers or foliage we might incorporate. A fresh style of lei making! A quick and fun one to teach keiki, a way to decorate homes or papale!
I am so excited to see the completed exhibit, called “Awakening.” Its opens to the public on Saturday September 17, 2022, and continues to be on display until September 2023.
Heidi Bornhorst 