By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
Dr. Robert C. West, of Conte Madero, Calif., and Mary Lynn
Dukes, of Perry, Ga., are some of the people who have paid to
come to Hawaii to work on the taro patch at Lyon Arboretum.
IT'S fun for young and old. If you fall somewhere in the middle, right now you're out of luck. For the young, Lyon Arboretum is offering a week of activity for kids who are completing grades 2 through 4, and for the, well, more mature, the arboretum has been one of the dozens of educational facilities to take part in Elderhostel, a travel and learning program for people over the age of 55. The lure of
growing thingsLyon Arboretum offers youngsters
and retirees hands-on experienceThe children's program, developed by Jill Laughlin of the arboretum staff, will include digging in the garden, some cooking, lots of art activities and a variety of hands-on science projects. "Activities," Laughlin says, "are designed to inspire budding artists, challenge aspiring naturalists and encourage growing scientists."
It will be held during the first week of school vacation, 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. from June 15 through 19, at the arboretum at 3860 Manoa Road. The program, "Partners for Growing Science," is a pilot for one that Laughlin will begin with elementary school teachers in the fall.
"Partnerships are established between local schools and the garden, and curriculum materials are developed that link the arboretum and its resources with the classroom," she said. It was first presented at the Chicago Botanical Garden, and is funded by a National Science Foundation grant. The program is limited to 20 students, and costs $125 per child. For more information, call 988-3177.
It's more than coincidence that the Elderhostel program has similar goals to the one for 8-year-olds. Inspiring artists, challenging naturalists and encouraging scientists is largely what Elderhostel is all about. It describes itself as "a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving the educational needs of people over 55," adding that annually, more than 250,000 people participate in its short-term, low-cost residential programs. The choice of destinations includes all of the United States and Canada, and 70 countries around the world.
Participants in programs in the U.S. and Canada pay for their own transportation to and from the program, but once they arrive, their rooms, meals, instructions and field trips are covered. The cost for the one week program averages about $390.
The international programs are from two to four weeks long, each week spent in a different site, and the price includes airfare from one of several mainland cities. An 18-day program in Great Britain, for example, costs about $2,600 including airfare from San Francisco. Naturally, the accommodations and the meals are not going to challenge The Lodge at Koele, and they frequently are in college dormitories and occasionally provide shared bathrooms.
A random look through the condensed 103-page catalog shows a study of wildlife in Alaska, Chinese life arts in Beijing, geology of the Grand Canyon, opera in San Francisco, folklore and culture in Kyoto, Renaissance art in Florence, and the artistic heritage of eastern Sweden. The full catalog weighs five pounds.
Of specific interest to gardeners is "The English Garden Revealed" with field trips to major gardens in the area of York, "Great Irish Houses and Gardens," "High Sierra Wildflowers" out of Squaw Valley in California, "The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg" in Virginia and dozens of others.
The programs are active to the extent that the travelers participate in study programs and field trips, but they aren't chasing bears in Alaska or digging for artifacts in the Grand Canyon. It's the service programs, like the one to Lyon Arboretum, where participants pay to work. Other service tours have monitored a declining reef ecosystem in Belize and rebuilt computers in Maryland.
The horticultural program at Lyon Arboretum, which is a research unit of the University of Hawaii, was organized by Kapiolani Community College, and the participants stayed in the university's Conference Center on the Manoa campus. Program coordinator Hazel Tominaga explained that the participants included two doctors, four nurses, several retired teachers and an engineer. Many of them were on their fourth or fifth Elderhostel experience.
Cleo and Bill Bass of Broken Arrow, Okla., were on their 13th tour and second service trip. "I guess it's the people," Cleo said. "If you're willing to pay money to work on somebody else's property, you're probably interesting." The Basses had worked in the garden of Hawaiian native plants, and had prepared planting media in the micropropagation laboratory.
John Starr of Sherman Oaks, Calif., is an engineer who was serving at Schofield Barracks on Dec. 7, 1941, and has returned several times to attend survivors meetings. This time, instead, he was digging in the taro patch where the arboretum is studying the cultivation of various taro plants to increase poi production.
Charlotte and Robert Davis of Broomfield, Colo., have panned for gold and studied the lives of loggers and miners in the Sierra Nevada with Elderhostel. They chose this trip because "we wanted to see more than the beach," she said.
On the rainy morning of this visit, the 20 Elderhostel volunteers gathered at the taro loi to hear Lyon staff member Kenneth Seamon talk about taro cultivation. Neither Broken Arrow nor Sherman Oaks grows taro, but Bass and Starr and the other participants took notes and asked intelligent questions. They, after all, had been planting corms in the mud and had a personal interest in the subject.
Seamon told them that once more than 60 varieties of taro grew at what is now Lyon Arboretum, but wild pigs wiped out all but 12, which managed to survive under the weeds. He discovered the overgrown taro patch by accident, and it has been restored with volunteer labor. His project now is to identify the different varieties by color, corm size, leaf shape and the production of offshoots. It will take three years. Several of the Elderhostel travelers promised to return to see the results of their efforts.
For more information on the Elderhostel program, see the catalogs available at all state public libraries, call Hazel Tominaga at 942-7065 or write to Elderhostel, 75 Federal St., Boston, MA 02110.
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