HAWAI'I GARDENS
Xeriscape garden's open house

By Heidi Bornhorst

Would you like to learn techniques to have a beautiful garden and yet save water?

You can see a well-planned, long-term xeriscape garden at Halawa and buy plants for your garden.

Now more than ever we need to use water wisely in our gardens.

The Halawa Xeriscape Garden's 15th annual open house and plant sale is tomorrow, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the garden in the Halawa Valley Central Park Industrial Area.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Board of Water Supply and the Friends of Halawa Xeriscape Garden, a nonprofit group supporting educational programs related to water conservation in the landscape.

Garden visitors will have the opportunity to see, buy, win or grow native Hawaiian plants to create their own forest in their yards.

The plant sale hosts more than 10 nurseries promoting native and introduced water-conserving plants.

The water board will offer classes in xeriscaping, garden pests, native plant propagation and, for the first time this year, la'au lapa'au (Hawaiian medicinal plants and their healing properties). Experts from the Pearl City Urban Garden will be available to answer your plant questions in the "Ask the Plant Doctor" tent.

Adult visitors to the garden will be eligible to participate in the free hourly plant give-away drawing, but you must be present to win. Once again, the water board will distribute a limited number of native Hawaiian plant seed packets, one packet per person.

Free tours of the xeriscape garden will be available all day long. Free van shuttles will operate from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. along Iwaena Street, leading to the xeriscape garden.

For more information, phone the Board of Water Supply at 748-5041.

Keepers of the flame tree

Two lovely, less-thirsty trees perfect for xeriscape gardens were planted last week in honor of two great living women: Janet Wimberly and Cynthia Marnie.

These women have done much to keep our island green and gorgeous. The new trees are royal poincianas or flame trees, Delonix regia, native to the Indian Ocean island Madagascar.

The tree planting was done by city arborists, and the mayor attended. Sponsoring the plantings were the Kapi'olani Park Preservation Society, led by president Jack Gilmar, and Scenic Hawai'i, led by Cis Crocker George.

The trees, planted last Friday, grace the "rolling hills" section of Kapi'olani Park, just diamondhead of Paki Hale.

Marnie and Wimberly are founders and board Members of Scenic Hawaii Inc.

They arrived here from the Mainland as young women and have been volunteering for 50 years to protect the beauty of Hawai'i.

An example of their earlier work: Although the Hawai'i billboard law was enacted in 1927, it protected only O'ahu. They admitted to "camping outside of the men's lua" to talk to the legislators and convince them to keep billboards off of all the islands.

This is only one of the many issues they worked on, which, until today, are keeping our city clutter-free and as beautiful as possible.

At one time, Wimberly was the coordinator of House and Garden tours for tourist groups, and inevitably the tourists on the buses would remark on how wonderful it was that we did not have billboards here to block the views.

Marnie also was instrumental in helping Luci Pfaltzgraff save Diamond Head from further development.

Consequently Diamond Head was named a national landmark and then a state landmark.

Marnie arrived on Maui in 1942 as a nurse, a little before Dec. 7. She met and married her husband on Maui, and then moved to Honolulu, where she was a public-health nurse and he continued his dental practice.

Wimberly arrived in Honolulu in the late 1930s with her husband. She taught speech and English at the University of Hawai'i, and her husband started an architectural firm.

She has been instrumental in volunteering at, and furthering the cause of, KCAA, the Mother Rice pre-schools.

Her diligence for so many years has helped the organization grow to the size it is today.

It's really quite amazing to think today about all that these powerful women have accomplished.