To the rescue
Gardener Sharon Okuda shows off the colorful flowering part of a large bromeliad in her Wahiawa backyard garden. “Ever since I was a kid, I always loved plants and wanted to have my own botanical garden,” said Okuda.
Near the front door of Sharon Okuda’s home is a pair of antique wagon wheels, on display with bromeliads including pineapple.
A 200-pound mochi pounding stone, or “usu,” has been re-purposed as a water feature in Okuda’s garden. A solar-powered pump circulates the water in the bowl.
Polka dot begonias have a place in Okuda's landscape.
Okuda also includes cosmos flowers in her garden.
One of Okuda's flowers includes a large double bird of paradise.
Friends and neighbors often leave plants outside Sharon Okuda’s Wahiawa home. They give her cuttings and leave neglected flowers and greenery for her to adopt.
"I’m like the fire station," she jokes. "People call me when their parents can’t take care of their plants anymore, or they just drop things off. My husband says, ‘Stop being a moocher,’ but I’m not a moocher. People keep giving me things. How can I say no?"
Even the pair of antique cast-iron wagon wheels that grace her front yard was given to her by neighbors who were cleaning their late grandparents’ property and found them under the house.
Other parts of her garden were "rescues," like the ti plants Okuda retrieved from the trash.
"It was a shame to throw them away," she said.
The weathered wagon wheels, surrounded by a display of spiky bromeliads, are the centerpiece of the small front yard, but it’s not until guests walk to the back of the 15,000-square-foot property that the scope of Okuda’s plant collection becomes apparent.
Surrounding the expanse of lawn are sections of polka-dot begonias, red euphorbia, akulikuli and other succulents, a gout plant (Jatropha podagrica), monstera, heleconia, ginger, orchids, pua kika (cigar flower), plumeria, rose pikake, gardenia, lilikoi, banana, herbs and endemic plants such as ihi (Portulaca molokiniensis) and the white kokio keokeo (Hibiscus waimeae) — "the only scented hibiscus in the world," she said.
As Okuda was pulling her yard together about seven years ago, she decided she needed to "frame" her diverse assortment of plants. She began checking the "free" section of the classified ads and spotted an offer of moss-covered rocks from a wall that was being knocked down in Mililani. The Okudas went over and loaded up on rocks, and they collected many more loads as she continued to scour the ads for similar opportunities.
"I’ve never paid for rocks. It took me years, but over time we used nice moss rock to border the garden and it’s just perfect," she said.
Stone plays an important role in another garden component. On one side of the house sits an "usu," or mochi stone. "My husband’s father used it to pound mochi, and it was just sitting there in their garage collecting dust," Okuda said.
The usu weighs about 200 pounds, and once it was unloaded from a vehicle, "we rolled it all the way to the house," she said. A solar-powered pump circulates water in the bowl of the stone, which is home to a small population of guppies. The water feature is in keeping with the secondhand nature of Okuda’s yard.
"My niece said, ‘You know, Auntie, this is like a memory garden,’ because there are so many things I’ve gotten from people," she said.
OKUDA attributes her love of greenery to growing up in a farm family. Her parents grew watercress and other crops on land behind Leeward Community College.
"Ever since I was a kid, I always loved plants and wanted to have my own botanical garden," said Okuda, who worked on the farm through college.
When she was about 8 years old, her mother gave her a 3-by-5-foot plot of her own. "We dug it up together with a hoe and pick, and she said, ‘OK, pick one vegetable and one flower.’ I still remember, I picked Swiss chard and orange nasturtium."
To this day, Okuda said, "I always have a nasturtium in the garden."
She waters about every three days and spends her Sundays tending to her garden.
"It took me about seven years to get everything the way I wanted it. I needed to get it to a point where I’m not a slave to it," she said. "If you plant things in the right place, they’ll thrive with little attention.
"Things just pop up all over the place. It’s magical."
Her creativity and dedication earned Okuda the $1,000 grand prize in the Wahiawa Historical Society’s Landscape Contest last year. The contest aims to create "pride of place" while beautifying neighborhoods and encouraging residents’ interest in gardening, soil care and composting. Five other home gardeners were recognized in other categories.
"How awesome that we all have this certificate that proclaims our gardens a community treasure," Okuda said.
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“Garden Party” spotlights unique and exceptional gardens. Contact us via email at features@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4808.
