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Everybody's talkin' about Pua Mau Place!
 Sunday
March 4, 2001
Pua Mau Place Botanical Garden, near Kawaihae on the Kohala Coast,
is a 45 acre desert garden set on an exposed rise commanding sweeping
vies of the ocean and mountains. Now under development, it will,
when mature, be one of the finest public gardens on the island,
with beautifully designed displays of tropical trees, flowers, shrubs,
an aviary of exotic birds and an ever-blooming hibiscus maze.
volume 4 number 1
February/March 2001
At Pua
Mau Place in Kawaihae, brilliantly colored flowers are a year-round
delight. That's because this new arboretum and botanical garden
specializes in plants that are pua mau, or always flowering.
Situated on the west side of the Kohala Mountains with a panoramic
ocean view, the 15-acre (so far) garden features a maze planted
with 250 species of hibiscus. When you successful navigate the maze,
you'll arrive at the Magic Circle, where stones are lined up with
the setting sun a la Stonehenge. Pua Mau also has a bird aviary
with about 150 pea- and guinea-fowl. The nonprofit garden, which
operates to "protect, preserve and propagate plant life indigenous
to the arid climate of the Big Island and promote continuously blooming
plants" is open 10 am to 5 pm, Wednesdays through Sundays.
"Our
walk takes us by numerous plantings amidst a backdrop of huge rocks
that have been artfully relocated to provide added visual interest.
We tour specially designed garden areas with plants too numerous
to mention which provide an opportunity for the visitor to have
a variety of botanical experiences as diverse as the plant population."
January - April, 2001
WATCH
PUA MAU PLACE GROW
In 1974, Dr. Virgil Place and some friends stood on the western
slopes of the Kohala Mountain Range on Hawaii's Big Island and said,
"Let there bloom a garden in this arid, wind-blown, lava strewn
land." And so it is - Pua Mau Place, a 40 acre tropical garden
oasis, still in it's infancy, is growing above the Pacific Ocean
on the North Kohala Coast.
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