By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
The award-winning Polynesian Cultural Center Alii Luau
Garden offers several picture-perfect vistas. At left is
landscape architect Alan Kutsunai with PCC's
housekeeping and landscape manager Ron Ahina.
A national award for landscape design may be beyond your immediate goals for your back yard, but knowing how they judge these things may give you some helpful ideas. A winning garden
takes planningThe Polynesian Cultural Center's Alii Luau Garden, designed by Belt Collins Hawaii, was judged "Best Commercial Garden Space" in the nation last month in the annual American Garden Awards program of the National Landscape Association.
The garden started as "a vacant lawn, untidy and unused," explained principal garden landscape architect Alan Kutsunai.
The first point in creating a garden is an overall design. What Kutsunai calls "plantation gardens" have charm, but they don't work well on city lots. These are gardens that just grew. They have ti plants from Aunty Flo and croton from a neighbor, plumeria from a plant sale and ginger cockroached from Tantalus. The effect is good on big country lots, but chop suey on small suburban properties.
Kutsunai started planning the luau garden by determining a theme. "We simply wanted a Hawaiian garden. While native plants are great, we had to provide what the tourists expect to see." That meant including some tropical introductions.
Visitors are most familiar with ginger, bird of paradise, ferns and heliconia from the flower arrangements in their hotel lobbies, and these are used in the garden. This is the second criterion, after an overall design. The plant material must be compatible with the environment, healthy, harmonious in color and horticulturally correct. Don't plant marigolds or impatiens in an otherwise Hawaiian garden.
The third element the American Garden Awards are based upon is hardscape elements. These include walls, water features, lighting and irrigation. Kutsunai enclosed the garden with a rock wall, built from coral quarried on the property.
Unlike the true Hawaiian rock wall, these rocks are cemented into place, but the effect is much the same. The construction of a waterfall and a stream running through the garden adds an element of sound and of coolness. The water splashes over a 30-foot pile of rocks into a shallow pool and into a small stream.
"We had to think about photo opportunities," Kutsunai said. While this isn't usually a factor in home gardens, landscape architects encourage gardeners to provide vistas or outdoor rooms for special uses. These can be shaded for reading or talking, grassed for children's games, or planted for viewing from within the house.
In the case of a public garden such as the luau garden, visitors bring cameras and want a tropical background for the family snapshot. Looking at the bridge over the stream, the waterfall and dozens of colorful planted areas, you can almost hear somebody saying, "Smile, Mabel, this will be our Christmas card."
Appropriateness of detail is another element, and Kutsunai said that the luau garden's predominantly red, orange and yellow scheme represents Hawaiian royalty.
"We steered away from the pastels, and grouped the colors together against a background of greens. Bright colors photograph best," Kutsunai said. "Colors are richer when they are balanced by the green. The challenge was not to put one of everything into the garden -- where are the sweet potatoes, where is the taro? You lose the composition if you throw everything into it. Keep it simple."
The textures of the plants and foliage should also be harmonious. Repeat elements, use the same planting in several areas rather than introducing a new color or a different texture. "Think of it like your living room," Kutsunai said. "You decorate the entire space as a unit."
That means, you don't put a little Early American in one corner and some Louis XIV in another.
The next criterion is the environment. Is the landscaping safe for visitors, sensitive to the climate and soil and compatible with the existing landscape? The Alii Luau Garden uses as a backdrop the ironwood trees and coconut palms that have been in place for years, making it look older than its actual 18 months.
Finally, the award recognized the maintenance, which is supervised by Ron Ahina, the grounds and housekeeping manager, and a very small staff. This is important to the the home garden.
If you'd rather be on the grass of the golf course than mowing your own, if trimming large trees is beyond your capability, if weeding is not on your list of favorite pursuits, think about how you will deal with these problems. You can hire people to mow, trim and weed, or you can minimize the work by focused landscaping.
The Polynesian Cultural Center is open 12:30 to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday. The kamaaina fee is $13, with additional charges for entertainment and food.
Gardening Calendar in Do It Electric!
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