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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Sunday, January 16, 2005

OUR HONOLULU

From rare to garden variety

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

Mary Cooke had to get an endangered species permit to bring a Munroidendron tree from the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kaua'i in 1996 for her native Hawaiian garden in Manoa. Today the same plant is on sale in the garden shop at Home Depot.

You see how popular native Hawaiian plants have become? Mainland gardens are old hat. Native is chic.

When Cooke was putting together her garden, she had to go to places like Lyon Arboretum to find native plants. Now they're easier to find. Nurseries all over O'ahu have them for sale. There's a listing of 33 nurseries on the Big Island that sell native plants. They give discounts to hula halau.

The custodian at Kailua Elementary School brings native plants to grow in the school yard so the kids can become familiar with them. She's discouraged because people steal so many of them for their own yards.

So you might start thinking about what native plants you'd like to adopt. It's fun, like having a kolea in the back yard. Native plants, like the kolea, are choosy. They decide where they want to grow. Mary Cooke said she's still experimenting. Some native plants didn't like her yard.

A fan of native plants, Mitsue Cook arranged a tour of Mary Cooke's Hawaiian garden so Betsy Connors and Sharon Geary of the Kailua Outdoor Circle could see it. The Outdoor Circle is gung-ho for planting native stuff to keep Kailua from becoming a suburb of Los Angeles in the face of development.

They dragged along Kimo Steinwascher, vice president of the developer Kaneohe Ranch Co. Also, landscape architect Steve Haus.

You don't need a big garden in Manoa like Mary Cooke's to get started. You can put a pot on your lanai. Palapalai fern is a natural. They sell it at all the garden shops and it's a plant that hula halau pick to wear when they dance at the Merrie Monarch.

Part of Mary Cooke's garden is devoted to plants used for food, drink or medicine — taro, sweet potato, sugar cane, banana, mountain apple, 'awa and noni.

It's a myth that there aren't any flowering native Hawaiian plants that are attractive. There are some spectacular native hibiscus — white and red — in Mary Cooke's garden. But most of the flowers are small, like 'ilima and naupaka.

What native Hawaiian plants lack in color, they make up for in exotic uses. Like 'akia, a low bush that contains a substance used to stun fish so you can catch them easily. And wauke, the bark of which is pounded to make kapa. I'm a fern devotee myself. I go for the kupukupu, native sword fern, in Mary's yard, and the moa that looks sort of like finger coral and grows from spores.

Among the books in Mary's library: "How to Plant a Native Hawaiian Garden" by Ken Nagata published by the state of Hawai'i and "Na Lei Makamae" by Marie McDonald and Paul Weissick.