Array of food grows in ever-changing garden

Michele Aucello’s childhood memories include planting flower seeds with her mother and enjoying fresh strawberries from a neighbor’s yard. Those fond recollections and a desire to teach her children about the science of nature led her and husband Kevin to start a large backyard garden that includes edibles and flowering plants.

“We started out with a few crown-flower plants. We were trying to show the kids the butterfly cycle,” she said.

One thing led to another.

Now growing in various plots throughout their 5,000-square-foot yard are Swiss chard, a variety of lettuces, arugula, kale, eggplant, green onion, garlic, chives, strawberries, grapes, turmeric, aloe and herbs.

Basil is a favorite. “We make pesto all the time,” Aucello said.

The garden isn’t limited to plants. An elaborate, shingled chicken coop sits on a bottom corner of the property. Ten-year-old son Luca feeds the family’s ISA Brown chickens, and his 12-year-old sister, Isabella, collects their brown eggs.

It took a lot of work to get to this point. When the Aucellos moved into their Wilhelmina Rise home 12 years ago, the backyard was a jumbled mess, an untamed slope of uneven earth and stone.

“We were renovating our house and yard at the time, so there was lots of dirt around and lots of places to grow plants,” said Aucello, 50. “The yard really took off when our gardener friend showed Kevin how to run an irrigation system off of the existing sprinkler system. We could bring water to any part of the garden.

The Aucellos made use of two massive lava boulders on the property to anchor a fishpond close to the house. The pond is home to guppies that help to control mosquitoes by consuming their larvae.

Kevin Aucello, 57, a commercial real estate executive, built the rock retaining walls behind the house and laid out a terraced lava rock and concrete walking path that zigzags down the back slope. Where ever he applied mortar or concrete to make the walkways more secure, family members left their mark.

“We put our hand and footprints as we did it, even the chickens,” Michelle Aucello said.

Their family’s first crops comprised peas, beans and butternut squash. “We started saving seeds from the food that we ate to see what would grow,” she said.

They still recycle their food waste in this way, as evidenced by the pineapples growing “all over the place because we save the tops and plant them.” Meanwhile, lemon trees provide tart juice that is frozen in ice cube trays for use throughout the year.

More ambitiously, coffee and cacao trees dot the property.

“The coffee trees sounded like a good idea until we realized how hard it is to process,” she said.

The family enrolled in chocolate-making classes to learn the craft but will have to wait a few years before their cacao trees produce pods.

The garden changes with the seasons. While the rest of the nation braces for the fall chill, Aucello, an educator, looks forward to the coming months.

“I really enjoy gardening in the fall. It’s too hard and hot to grow things in the summer,” she said. “We are always figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Over the years we’ve had more than 100 different plants.”

Beyond learning how to be good stewards of the land, the Aucellos’ children have also learned how to make lemon basil and mint soaps, and Isabella uses fresh catnip to make cat toys that she sells at the Littlest Co-op, a keiki farmers market within the Kakaako Farmers Market at Ward Warehouse on some Saturdays (visit facebook.com/TheLittlestCoOp for dates).

Aucello said there’s always something to do — whether building a new terrace, replanting, rotating crops or weeding — but the family doesn’t think of it as work.

“It’s very relaxing being in the garden … in the quiet,” she said.