Heidi Wise walks through the jungle nursery where
she and her husband Bill raise tropical plants.
Photos by Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Here, a native plant is one that either is found only in Hawaii, or is also found elsewhere but is unique in each habitat. Also included are the pre-contact introductions by the early Polynesians from the South Pacific.
Most of the tropical flowers sold by local florists and garden shops, including plumeria, ginger, anthuriums, bougainvillea and most orchids, are not native to the islands and therefore are exotics.
At left are beehive (top) and
Indonesian wax ginger that the couple planted.
The cultivation of these flowers is one of the islands' most promising industries, since there is a worldwide market for them. Most of the growers are located either in rural Oahu or on the Neighbor Islands, but Heidi and Bill Wise are growing tropical flowers in a jungle 5 minutes from the University of Hawaii.
At the end of Manoa Road across from what was once Paradise Park, the Wises are leasing property from the park. They moved here about 18 months ago from the Big Island where they were also in the nursery business. But before that, Bill Wise had earned money for college by working for his uncle, a Big Island landscaper.
He liked gardening, and after college moved to New York to begin work with a Long Island nursery. There he married Heidi, from upstate New York and the couple moved to California. But like so many transplanted Hawaiians, Bill got homesick, and he and Heidi returned here to tame the Manoa jungle. And to some extent, the Manoa jungle is taming them.
"Farming is an awful lot of work," Heidi says. "We are up at 5 a.m. when the roosters go off, and it's heavy physical labor. But beyond all the work, it's an idyllic life."
They had originally thought to clear the land and plant rows of ginger and heliconia, but with the 257 inches of annual rainfall there, it would not work. As fast as the flowers would grow, so would everything else. So the tropical flowers grow in profusion, but tangled among the trees, the bamboo and the heavy foliage.
The Wises have named the property "Waihii" for the ancient Hawaiian name for Manoa Falls. "Conservationists always want the land returned to what it was, but this land has been farmed forever. It was terraced, and the Hawaiians grew taro and vegetables here," Heidi said.
Their principal cash crops now are heliconia, ginger and ornamental bananas, along with tropical foliage. Ornamental bananas are now the rage among flower arrangers, particularly for the massive displays found in hotel lobbies. Two of the Wises' best customers are the Ihilani and Halekulani hotels.
Ornamental bananas (bearing beautiful but inedible fruit) are usually small plants with the broad leaves of edible banana plants. Instead of the hanging hands of long yellow fruit, these plants bear short, fat red, orange or pink fruit which lasts for about three months on the plant.
It is harvested before the fruit matures, and lasts four weeks or more in arrangements. These bananas grow anywhere the common banana will, and Heidi says that they are not susceptible to the bunchy top disease.
Bill and Heidi Wise
"I don't do weddings," Heidi said firmly. "There are enough florists around who do, and I am not a florist by trade. But the main objections are the bride's mother and the aunties and the bridesmaids who all have different ideas from the bride. You need a diplomat, not a flower grower."
The Wises have studied plant nomenclature, the Latin names given to plants for instant identification, and they wish that some of the florists who buy from them would do the same. "We get a call and the florist says, 'You know those yellow things you brought a couple of weeks ago? Well, I'd like to order more of them.' We have lots of yellow things," Heidi said.
Heliconias last well as cut flowers. Heidi recommends cutting an inch off the bottom of the stem, then soaking the entire cutting in water for 10 minutes. Ideally, they should be soaked every three days, but they can also be misted on that schedule. Because heliconias do not take water up through their stems to the flowers, floral preservatives do more harm than good by promoting bacteria growth.
The smaller the heliconia, the shorter its life as a cut flower. The flowers are actually the tiny blossoms inside the colorful bracts, and they should be removed every few days.
The Wises harvest their flowers on Monday mornings and they sell all they cut to local florists and to individual buyers. Heidi makes small arrangements that are sold in hospital gift shops. For information - but no weddings - call Waihii Farm at 988-1478.
