From New York to Kauai, couple trade high life for gardening

When they were in their 20s, Doug Wolkon and his wife, Genna, were living the high life in New York. He was in real estate investment, acquiring properties for clients — from multimillionaires to private endowments for Yale and Harvard. She was designing products and packaging for Fortune 500 companies.

It was an exciting time, albeit stressful and demanding.

After monthlong breaks to Southeast Asia and India, however, they began to question what they were doing. They realized they couldn’t keep it up and have the happy, stable family life of their childhood.

So they quit their jobs. For the next several years, they took on freelance projects that paid the bills, and then in March 2008, they decided to relocate to Kauai with their 4-month-old son. They had enjoyed two weeks on the island the previous year.

“We moved to Kauai for the healthy living and open-minded culture,” Doug Wolkon said. “It seemed like the right place to slow our pace and find a new path. We used our savings from our old lifestyles to take the time to heal. We learned to surf and paddle canoe, practiced yoga, received massage and acupuncture and began eating healthier. Then a friend introduced us to noni (Indian mulberry), which changed our lives.”

The couple started making tea with noni leaves and found that it cleansed their digestive tract and boosted their energy, circulation and mental acuity. Recognizing a business opportunity and a chance to spread the word about what they regarded as a “super herb,” they began selling bags of their homemade noni tea at local farmers’ markets and health food stores.

Around the same time, in 2010, they moved to a house in Kilauea, on Kauai’s north shore, that had a small garden with a dozen different kinds of plants, all unfamiliar to them. When Wolkon asked their landlady how the plants could be used, she suggested making tea.

“On the day we moved in, I stayed up late to research the plants and began making tea the next morning,” he said. “My first blend was tulsi (holy basil), lemon balm, mint and sage. It was delicious! I began making it by the gallon, and Genna and I drank it every day, throughout the day.”

Amazing Benefits

The benefits were dramatic: The couple lost weight, their metabolism increased and they felt peppier than they had in years. They realized there was largely untapped healing potential not only in noni but in many other plants and set out to revive the lost art of plant medicine.

In 2011, they purchased a horse ranch in Kilauea — four acres of glorious greenery, including noni, gardenia, puakenikeni, starfruit, lychee, guava, mango and macadamia nut. To those varieties, they started adding dozens more, ranging from familiar lavender, cinnamon and curry to exotic ones with names they could barely pronounce such as ashwagandha, gotu kola and spilanthes.

Garden Transformation

Transforming the jungle into an organic medicinal herb farm required more work than the Wolkons anticipated. But they read books, scoured the internet for information and sought advice from healers and Hawaiian cultural practitioners. With help, they removed fences and big invasive trees, whacked weeds with machetes, gathered seeds and seedlings, built solar dehydrators, installed racks to cure herbs, experimented with blends of plants and created packaging and branding.

Wolkon came up with the perfect name for the venture, which launched in 2013 — Kauai Farmacy. Today, he, Genna and their “dream team” of gardeners, florists, herbalists and tea makers produce some three dozen products on-site, just steps from the flourishing gardens.

No longer do the Wolkons buy medicines and herbal supplements. From aloe to soothe sunburn to yarrow to stop bleeding to comfrey to mend bones, there are always abundant healing plants at their fingertips.

“The FDA doesn’t allow us to say that our plants cure, but we believe they can,” Wolkon said. “Our gardens are our medicine cabinet.”

Touring the Farm

On the two-hour Medicinal Herb Garden Experience, you’ll learn about the history of Kauai Farmacy as you taste several herbal teas. You’ll stroll among 70 kinds of plants, most of which are mixed into therapeutic teas, tinctures, spices, salves, balms, hydrosols and powders. You’ll smell, touch, pick and nibble on leaves, berries, seeds and flowers as the guide explains their medicinal properties.

You’ll learn about permaculture, an agricultural system modeled on natural ecosystems. Kauai Farmacy’s plants don’t grow in monocropped rows like most commercial crops; rather, they are placed in clusters of multiple species that support and complement each other, which contributes to the balance, health and immune system of the entire group.

“Diversity enables our plants to ward off pests and creates a symbiotic environment where (plants) can thrive,” Wolkon said. “We don’t use pesticides or herbicides, and we feed our plants nutrient-rich compost that we make from green waste. When we trim them, we ‘chop and drop,’ so they can also nourish themselves. Bottom line: Nature has it all figured out; we’re just trying to mimic her.”

Stay and Talk

You’re welcome to “talk story” with workers as they plant, mulch, harvest, build garden beds and handle other tasks. In the nursery, you’ll gain insights about propagation methods, and in the Tea House, you’ll observe the steps that transform fresh plants into finished products — within a week in most cases. The tour concludes at the Tea Lanai and Farm Store, where you can sample all of Kauai Farmacy’s health and wellness products.

“Thanks to the land and the plants, Genna, our three kids and I are experiencing and learning about optimal health every day, and we want to share what we’ve learned,” Wolkon said. “Popping pills masks people’s real underlying problems. Trust the potency of plants. They teach us to take full responsibility for our health and become our own healer. That is empowering beyond measure.”

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won several Society of American Travel Writers awards.