across the continental United States and Canada mainly by railroad to gather information on Japanese gardens in North America to benefit Lili`uokalani Gardens in Hilo, Hawai`i
With all of the public health precautions, public gardens the world over have faced closures, financial challenges, and in some cases deferred maintenance.
Some public gardens have used the closure time to accomplish long awaited improvements. The Japanese garden at Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan, used the time to reset large stones along a path and repair a hillside.
Lili`uokalani Gardens in Hilo experienced a little of both deferred maintenance and long awaited improvement. Thanks to the quiet actions of several volunteer groups, several deferred maintenance projects are being brought current since July.
Here are some of the more recent tasks.
In early November, students on a gap semester tour of Hawaii spent four days in Lili`uokalani Gardens. One of the tasks was renewing the azalea bed near Shoroan, the Urasenke Society of Hilo tea house. All sod removed from this area was moved to the meadow to build up eroded soil around the base of the large stones set by Kazuo Nakamura in 1976.After removing sod and weeds, the soil was amended and holes dug for new plantings. Then the bed was fertilized and topped with bark mulch.The ARCC gap semester students at the end of the azalea bed taskA week after the students upgraded the azalea patch, Rotary Club of Hilo celebrated their centennial by planting 100 trees and bushes in Hilo, including two azalea in this patch.. Mahalo Wally Wong and Nancy Cabral.Hilo Visayan Club joined in the fun for the first time taking two Sundays of members’ valuable time. First, the sumo ring was cleaned from ceiling to floor.the end of the first SundayThe following Sunday, a larger crew joined to paint the rafters and posts.Friends of Lili`uokalani Gardens provided the paint and Hilo Visayan Club provided the paintersat the end of the day, the entire interior plus the picnic table had new coats of paintmeanwhile, across the park, the Lions tended to the Lions Legacy Project, pulling weeds along the sidewalk, pressure washing the sidewalk, thinning the iris hillside, cleaning white stones, and several other choresseparate groups (save for this group photograph) of no more than five accomplished a variety of tasks at the Lions Legacy Project in the southern shaded section of Lili`uokalani Gardens
For more information, please see the Friends of Lili`uokalani Gardens page on Facebook. Web page is under construction.
U.S. Japanese Gardens 