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Hawaii’s Back Yard
Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi
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COURTESY CRAIG ELEVITCH / BISHOP MUSEUM
Storyteller Tom Cummings brings to life the old tales of plants and people with a dramatic presentation at the festival.
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Garden event gathers elders, experts
Peter Van Dyke experienced a few tense moments last year when last-minute cancellations left only two participants for the Grow Hawaiian Festival's Cultural Round Table, a panel discussion featuring experts on Hawaiian history and culture.
Amy B.h. Greenwell Ethnobotanical GArden
Place: On Highway 11, 12 miles south of Kailua-Kona, between mile markers 110 and 111, Captain Cook, Big Island
Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays
Admission: Suggested donation of $4 per person
Call: (808) 323-3318
E-mail: agg@bishopmuseum.org
Web site: www.bishopmuseum.org/ exhibits/greenwell/greenwell.html
Notes: Open for guided tours, gardening classes and workshops on subjects such as tapa and uliuli (hula rattles) throughout the year. Registration necessary for classes.
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"We bring together kupuna (elders) and a moderator, and without much more than a general topic, a fascinating conversation always seems to unfold," said Van Dyke, manager of the Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden on the Big Island, where the annual festival takes place.
Thankfully, Van Dyke recalled, by the time the Round Table went on in the middle of the day, two other kupuna had joined the panel.
"If you were there, you knew you were witnessing something really special," he said. "For instance, Uncle Peter Park, a skilled weaver, recited from memory the 28 phases of the moon, which he had learned as a boy. When he passed away this year, I wondered how many others had learned the phases of the moon not in school, but from their fathers because that was something they needed to know as Hawaiian planters."
Part of the Bishop Museum, the 15-acre Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden spotlights more than 200 species of endemic, indigenous and introduced flora.
"We cultivate plants used by the ancient Hawaiians for food, clothing, shelter and cultural activities, including medicinal practices and religious ceremonies," said Van Dyke. "The goals of the Grow Hawaiian Festival are to increase the garden's visibility and to encourage people to think about the value of the natural and cultural worlds and the ways they are connected."
The fourth annual festival, set for Feb. 23, will give attendees the opportunity to meet and talk with cultural practitioners such as weavers, hula dancers and tapa makers, as well as botanists, conservationists and horticulturists, all of whom share a passion for Hawaii's plants.
COURTESY CRAIG ELEVITCH / BISHOP MUSEUM
These hands have been grafting trees for 75 years. Sunao Kakooka is on hand to show festival growers the art of grafting hibiscus.
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COURTESY CRAIG ELEVITCH / BISHOP MUSEUM
At the Plant ID booth, Clyde Imada, Marie Bruegmann and Shelley James are plant experts who can identify almost any plant in Hawaii.
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Grow Hawaiian Festival
When: 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Feb. 23
Admission: Free
MAIN PROGRAM
» 9 to 9:30 a.m.: Welcome ceremony
» 9:30 to 9:40 a.m.: "About Amy Greenwell," with Meg Greenwell, niece of the garden's founder
» 9:40 to 10:20 a.m.: "Horticulture of Restoration," with Bill Garnett, endangered species horticulturist
» 10:20 to 11 a.m.: "The Plants of Lua, Hawaiian martial arts," with Richard Paglinawan
» 11 a.m. to noon: Cultural Round Table with Hawaiian cultural authorities Marie McDonald, Elizabeth Lee and Hannah Springer
» Noon to 12:40 p.m.: "Keeping the Fire in the Dark Moon Times"
» 12:40 to 1:20 p.m.: "Frontiers of Native Plant Horticulture: Restoring Plant Communities on Islets," with Mike DeMotta, director of horticulture, National Tropical Botanical Garden
» 1:20 to 2 p.m.: "Why We Should All Plant Taro," with farmer Jerry Konanui
» 2 to 2:30 p.m.: Closing
GARDEN TOURS
» 10:30 a.m.: "Plants of Hula," with Tommy Boyd, grounds foreman, Bishop Museum
» 12:45 p.m.: Garden tour with David Orr, curator of collections, Waimea Arboretum and Botanical Garden
LEI CONTEST
» Noon: Leis due (lei haku, leis with no flowers, leis featuring exotic plants and open categories)
» 1:20 p.m.: Winners announced
OTHER ATTRACTIONS
Exhibit topics include plant propagation, grafting, leis, woodworking, ipu (Hawaiian gourds), Hawaiian quilts, lomilomi massage and pohaku (stone) shaping. Groups such as the National Parks Service, North Kona Dryland Forest Working Group, TREE Center Hawaii and the Cultural Learning Center at Kaala will be talking about their projects. Esteemed artist and historian Herb Kawainui Kane will be among the authors autographing their books.
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THERE WILL BE six major presentations; Van Dyke is especially excited about "Keeping the Fire in the Dark Moon Times," a dance, music and drama piece about the cycles of the moon that was developed for the ECHO Festival of Performing Arts last year (see www.echospace.org; ECHO is the acronym for Education Through Cultural & Historical Organizations, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education).
"The presentation shares the Cape Verde and the Wampanoag cultures from Massachusetts, the Inupiaq and Yupik cultures of Alaska and the culture of the native Hawaiians," said Van Dyke. "Cultural traditions from all over the world incorporate the phases of the moon in their crop-planting strategies."
One of his favorite booths is "Ask the Experts," to which people bring samples of unfamiliar plants and insects.
"Marie Bruegmann of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Clyde Imada and Shelley James of Bishop Museum are pretty hard to stump," said Van Dyke. "We'll also have Pat Conant of the state Department of Agriculture and David Preston of Bishop Museum on hand to identify insects; Jerry Konanui, president of Hui Kalo Moku o Keawe to identify taro species; and Ken Love of the Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers Society to identify uncommon fruits."
In addition, Scot Nelson, a plant pathologist from the University of Hawaii at Manoa's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, will offer remedies for plant ailments; Lisa Schattenburg from Maui Nui Botanical Garden will explain how she makes native plant dyes; the Kona Gourd Society will share the art of gourd decoration; and the Kona Weavers Club will fashion hats, mats and other lau hala items.
You also can weave a lei, make and play a bamboo nose flute and peruse exhibits by schools, parks and conservation groups ranging from reforestation efforts to the latest threats from invasive species.
"Our 100-plus volunteers and participants get to know each other at a luau the night before, so during the festival there's a feeling of community among them," said Van Dyke. "They're all enjoying each other's company in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere, and visitors get a sense of that. It's like dropping in on a big family picnic. Even if you don't know the people, the camaraderie rubs off on you."
Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based free-lance writer and Society of American Travel Writers award winner.