Tending Native Palms, Turning to Hope
“Director’s Notes” are excerpts from our monthly email newsletter, “Stories from the Garden.” Subscribe and see past issues here.
Dear Friends,
After weeks of incessant and heavy rain, we’re taking in the rare and bittersweet sound of water flowing in a streambed almost always dry and silent. In my eight years here in Peʻahi, I’ve heard it fewer than a handful of times, each one after a bout of strong Kona winds. As beautiful as it is, the song is one of streams diverted centuries ago, and of banks breached just last week. This most recent storm lingered too long in our islands, and though there was little damage to the palm garden, the winds lashed places beloved to many. The stream sings of upended lives and disrupted ecosystems, and it carries the call of this place—a call to come together to help restore the world’s well-being.
Down near the garden dojo, such an expression of collective care is unfolding. In the nursery, we are tending young palms—seedlings of native palms called loulu (genus Pritchardia). What began with the discovery in W.S. Merwin’s papers of a 1989 “Outline of a Project to Save the Hawaiian Pritchardias” became our own Loulu Project. Ours is a modest effort to contribute to Lāhainā’s revitalization after the August 2023 fires. We are propagating species of palms endemic to West Maui. In March 2024, almost two years ago to the day, we sowed seeds with wild population genetics of the critically endangered Pritchardia glabrata. Then we waited—for almost exactly one year. In March 2025, the first seed sprouted. And now, another year later, that keiki loulu shares the nursery with the 8 other Pritchardia glabrata who emerged from the soil in their own time.
In the last few weeks, our Loulu Project has taken on new dimensions still, thanks to the extraordinary partnership of the Plant Extinction Prevention Program. Last week, we visited PEPP’s Maui nursery and picked up eight Pritchardia forbesiana—another critically endangered West Maui loulu. These too were grown from seed collected in remote habitats. We hope that our contribution, however modest, will complement the extraordinary efforts of so many others by offering heritage trees to restoration efforts, returning endemic West Maui loulu species to the places they thrived in abundance long, long ago.
The scope and expression of our project may be different than the one William envisioned, but it shares the same conviction: that we must participate in the well-being of the places we love, even on the last day. As our project unfolds, I keep returning to the hope William expressed in his “Outline for a Project to Save the Hawaiian Pritchardias:”
I hope that if such a project were once well started it would come to include a small group of devoted individuals who would want to continue to contribute to it.
And indeed, William’s hope has come to be. We are grateful to Marybeth Fentriss and the Garden Club of Honolulu, botanist Matt Keir, Maui PEPP Coordinator Zach Pezzillo, botanist Susan Fawcett, Mary and Michael Lock, former resident and biologist Bill Baker, Merwin Conservancy horticulturist Sarah Bryce and longtime gardener Walter Schmid.
With my best wishes,
Sonnet
