Gardening couple finds respite in hobby

David Cheever doesn’t have a huge yard at his home in Pauoa, below Pacific Heights, but he made smart use of the available space to create a peaceful oasis with separate garden areas to enjoy with his wife, Cindy. There’s even a stand-alone garden room ideal for reading or taking a nap.

Cheever, 78, has run his own marketing firm for decades and writes the “Keep Hawaii Hawaii” column on island architecture and urban planning that runs monthly in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. He has served on the boards of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation and the Hawaii Architectural Foundation, and although he’s a busy guy, he always makes time for gardening.

His hillside property has an intriguing history of its own and was part of a larger 2-acre parcel where a Japanese teahouse once stood. Ever the researcher, Cheever asked neighbors

what they knew of the place and was told the teahouse was owned by a Japanese family that also had a fish market in Chinatown. There was a larger central structure and four smaller ones for intimate gatherings. The teahouse was frequented by U.S. military officers, but during the mid-’50s the structures began to deteriorate and were eventually demolished to make way for modern housing.

Cheever said his home was built on the site of the old teahouse parking lot, where a high rock wall still stands as a reminder of its colorful past. The L-shaped wall runs behind the couple’s home, creating space off one side of the house for a small lawn surrounded by lush foliage. French doors in Cheever’s office open onto the grassy area, and jade plants grow nearby for good luck.

This is Cheever’s favorite area. “Wherever you look you’ll see a garden,” he said.

An enclosed lanai off the second-story dining area looks onto a hillside terrace filled with bromeliads, oyster and spider plants, agapanthus and yellow iris.

Cindy Cheever, 77, cares for the flowers and foliage — yellow tea roses, ti, ginger, ferns, orchids and more — planted on either side of the driveway and leading to the front of the home.

On the hillside to the other side of the lawn, Cheever built a small, screened garden room that is encircled by plants and shaded by trees. “It’s amazing to be surrounded by the greenery,” he said.

The stone steps and walkway to the structure took more than two months to build. The site served as the dump for the teahouse, so when Cheever was building the garden room and walkway, he dug up old license plates from 1946 and 1950 and some bottles. “I’m not a bottle collector but I used them as planters,” he said.

Cheever also does wood carvings. He carved birds out of redwood and hung them in the garden room, where he takes his naps, enjoys cocktails or reads books.

Chairs are placed throughout the various garden areas so it’s easy to relax and enjoy the view. “At my age you need places to rest,” he said.

Maintaining the garden areas, which includes raking, watering and pruning, takes about three hours a week, but Cheever said gardening has always been a part of his life.

“I’m English, my mother was a gardener and my wife’s mother was, too,” he said. “It helps me relax. There’s just something about it.”