It’s easy to miss Waiahole Botanicals while driving along Kamehameha Highway on the Windward side, especially when one’s gaze tends to drift toward the ocean. The family-run nursery sits on 4-1/2 acres on the mauka side of the highway about 7 miles north of Kaneohe.

The Miranda family purchased the business from the Moriwaki family in 2003. Nathan Miranda, 36, is the nursery’s plant specialist and eldest of four siblings who went to college, then returned home to run the place. His twin brothers, Dustin and Justin, 35, help with maintenance while their sister, Jennifer, 30, works in the office.

Their parents, Stan and Debbie Miranda, have run a landscaping business, Turf & Shrub Care Hawaii, for more than 35 years.

Waiahole Botanicals’ mission is to offer an inventory of tried-and-true plants that work well in Hawaii’s climate, according to Nathan Miranda. The business welcomes visitors and is hosting a tour April 9 with the Friends of Honolulu Botanical Gardens.

“We really try to educate people beyond just selling plants,” he said. “We bring our gardening expertise to the nursery. We really want them to have a successful garden and to enjoy it.”

Beneath an expansive shade house measuring about 200 by 200 feet, there are rows of ti, anthuriums, water lilies, philodendrons, bromeliads, hapuu ferns, palms and a variety of trees. Some exotic finds include a Freycinetia, a blooming, evergreen climber in the pandanus family. Prices range from $8 for a 1-gallon pot of ohia lehua to $500 for a red sealing wax palm in a 25-gallon container.

Miranda, who studied liberal arts and business at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, estimates he’s helped landscape hundreds of gardens all over Oahu. He has a good grasp of which plants work well in the various microclimates and elevations of the island.

“I can put together a palette of plants off the top of my head, depending on where they live,” he said.

At the heart of the nursery is a demonstration garden that showcases the plants for sale. Stan Miranda created the garden with the plants he had at the time, and it continues to evolve.

Though put together with no particular theme, it has a haphazard charm, with a stone walkway that takes visitors past a 60-year-old ponytail palm, tall agave with yellow blooms and fragrant gardenias. Underfoot is a lush carpet of baby’s tears, an easy-to-grow ground cover.

A large bell made from parts of a castoff sand crusher from a local cement company hangs from reused curbstones. It makes a nice, strong tone when Nathan Miranda rings it.

Family friend, landscaper and sculptor Leland Miyano helped rig the bell and also gave the family an abstract stone sculpture. Miranda credits Miyano as his mentor for all of his plant knowledge.

The rim from another sand crusher forms an archway in the garden, while another remnant serves as a container for a bed of bromeliads and tillandsias (air plants) atop a lychee tree stump. A dried-out kamani tree stump, by default, serves as a natural sculpture nearby.

Miranda added his own touch to the garden by planting several native ohia lehua trees that are blooming abundantly with red flowers.

His strategy was to take the ohia lehua out of the pot and mound dirt around its base because the trees do not like to sit in water. In an effort to cultivate more of the ohia lehua, which have been afflicted with fungal disease on Hawaii island, he’s attempting to grow more from seedlings.

“So it’s just been kind of a slow experiment,” he said. “They really want to be up in the mountain, but you can grow them at sea level.”

The nursery has an extensive collection of ti and continues to hybridize new varieties, some of which are named after customers. A yellow-hued ti was named after Paul Weissich, former director of Foster Botanical Garden, after he visited the nursery.