ONCE a year, the 13 acres of Foster Botanical Garden are transformed from a place of tranquil daytime beauty to an evening fairyland of candles and moonlight. Ordinarily open only during the day, the annual night time event is scheduled to coincide with the full moon of midsummer. This year's Midsummer Night's Gleam will be held tomorrow, and it is a wonderful family event. Foster Garden set to glow
A thousand candles are placed along the garden paths and more are hanging in lanterns from the trees, guiding visitors among the performing musicians, singers and dancers from the many cultures that thrive in Hawaii. Admission is free.
Visitors may bring their own picnic or buy from vendors. Dinosaur tours through the Prehistoric Glen will begin at 4:30 p.m. for young visitors and garden tours begin at 5. There will be Korean folk dancing at 4:30, Hawaiian entertainment at 6, a choice of koto players or Middle Eastern dances at 7 and a choice of Japanese Moon Festival music or rock 'n' roll at 8. The garden is big enough so that Elvis and the Eagles won't compete with the samisen.
Dinosaurs can't be guaranteed in the Prehistoric Glen, but kids will see just what the dinosaurs saw when they roamed the earth hundreds of millions of years ago. According to Paul Weissich, who has written a description of the glen, most of the plant species are from the Mesozoic era, during which the dinosaurs developed and then disappeared. They include ferns and cycads straight out of Jurassic Park.
The great Bo tree near the entrance of the garden will be lighted to provide a pattern of shadows on the paths. The tree is sacred to the Hindus as the abode of the goddess Bhawani, and to Buddhists as the tree under which the Gautama Buddha achieved enlightenment. The famous Bo tree in a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, Weissich wrote, is possibly the oldest historical tree in the world. It was brought there in 288 B.C.as a young rooted offset of the original Budh Guya tree in Bihar, India, under which Buddha sat.
The Bo tree at Foster was sent as a seedling from the tree in Sri Lanka to Mary Robinson Foster, for whom the garden is named. Member of a kamaaina Hawaiian family, Mary Foster converted to Buddhism in 1893. She made generous donations to the Maha Bodhi Society, a Sri Lankan organization established for the spread of Buddhism and for charitable works, one of which was the Foster-Robinson Hospital for the Poor which is still part of the Colombo General Hospital.The grateful monks, who had propagated the seedling from the original Bo tree, sent her a seedling from their tree, so that the tree in Foster Garden is a piece of the tree under which the Buddha found enlightenment.
The land that is now Foster Garden was divided into six portions by King Kamehameha III. The largest piece went to his wife, Queen Kalama, and the portion ewa of Nuuanu Stream was given to James Robinson, Mary Foster; father. Dr. James Hillebrand, an ailing physician from Germany, moved here in 1851 to improve his health, and leased property on the other side of the stream. He planted trees from all over Hawaii and the Pacific on that property.
Not only did the landscaping improve, but so did Hillebrand's health, and before his death in 1886, he wrote a text on the flora of the Hawaiian Islands which remains a standard source on tropical horticulture.
Mary and Thomas Foster were Hillebrand's neighbors and later bought his land. While Thomas organized the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company, Mary supervised the planting of the garden. But when he died in 1889, she let the garden to run wild.
In 1916, Joseph Rock, working for the Department of Forestry, made an inventory of what was left of the garden. The next year Harold Lyon began to clear up what had become a jungle. By 1920, the garden was a showplace and he suggested to Foster that she ensure the future of her garden as a park.
At her death in 1930, her home and garden were willed to the City and County of Honolulu, and the following year Foster Garden was open to the public. The garden is now an oasis of beauty and quiet only a block or two from downtown Honolulu.
When you visit the garden, look up, and admire the majesty of the enormous trees that now shade it. It took the strength of a woman who shocked her family by embracing an Asian religion and her foresight to guarantee the future of her garden that has given the city a unique, accessible botanical park.
Let there be light
What: Midsummer Night's Gleam
Gardening Calendar in Do It Electric!
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