Pretty much everything Happy and Katsugi "Kats" Tamanaha grow in their lush garden in Nuuanu Valley is used for lei making.
Happy is an award-winning lei maker. She uses everything from the plants that grow on their small hillside garden — buds, leaves and stems — to create fragrant lei.
"I’m her gofer," joked her husband. "I drive her car and help her pick flowers."
With quick and deft movements, Happy Tamanaha expertly uses the wili, or winding, method to create a colorful lei of chrysanthemums, anthuriums and ferns embellished with a blade of variegated spider plant and wrapped together with raffia.
It’s practically second nature to her, since she’s honed her craft for decades. As she works, she’ll get a sudden inspiration and call out to her husband, urging him to collect a few more of a particular bloom or fern from the yard. He willingly obliges.
The Tamanahas are well known in lei-making circles, having participated in numerous contests, including Honolulu’s annual May Day competition.
Happy Tamanaha, 79, is well versed in six styles of lei making. Kats Tamanaha, 82, prefers kipuu, or knotting. On a recent afternoon he had kukui leaves laid out in his workshop space on the back lanai, ready for lei making.
For years they have taught classes for children at the Kauai Museum and Lyon Arboretum.
"They are the new generation of lei makers," said Happy Tamanaha. "We want to teach the next generation because a lot of times it gets lost."
She first learned to make lei at the age of 8 from a neighbor at Waialua Homestead on Kauai, where she grew up. She also learned from other award-winning lei makers such as Bill Char and Brian and Reynold Choy.
Originally from Kauai, the couple moved to Oahu for education-related jobs. Happy Tamanaha was an art teacher, and her husband was a teacher and counselor at University of Hawaii community colleges.
They have four grandchildren, who they taught to make lei during visits from the mainland.
The couple’s hillside yard, which wraps around the side and back of their trilevel home, contains a rainbow of colorful blooms: anthuriums, potted mums, ixora, bleeding hearts, pink roses, olaa beauty (a deep purple flower), blue and yellow ginger, and native ohai and red kokio, or hibiscus.
While walking on a small path between the dense vegetation, Happy Tamanaha expertly plucked flowers, stems, leaves and buds. Color is just as important as texture when creating a lei, she said, but her favorite materials have fragrance.
"You can use anything," she said — even weeds, such as ageratum, which produces fluffy blue flowers.
Baby ti leaf can always be incorporated into lei, and are all around the yard in various colors. There also is a variety of ferns, including palapalai, lauae, petticoat and palaa (Hawaiian lace).
Since purchasing their home in 1968, the Tamanahas planted a puakenikeni tree, two kukui nut trees, a tricolor plumeria tree and a rare native nau, or gardenia.
The red ohia lehua usually bloom between February and March, while pikake and mountain apple trees produce beautiful white flowers in the summertime.
Nuuanu is an ideal place to grow, according to Kats Tamanaha, because there’s rain almost year-round. But that’s not the only secret to their success in the garden.
"I talk to the plants," he said. "Sometimes I scold them because they don’t give me enough flowers. Most of the time I’m thanking them for the flowers and the greens."
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