Mark's Garden

Yesterday I worked in the part of the McBryde garden that Mark (gardener) takes care of. Working on the hale I got to know more of the garden staff, and from the beginning I was interested in checking out other parts of the very extensive gardens in Lawai. It was a great day, perhaps the most productive I've had working there, and Mark is a veritable fount of knowledge about flora.

You can see all of this (without having to do any work) on the McBryde tour.

For a quick description of some of the botanical families mentioned below, see the NTBG site. I know enough not to pretend to attempt summarizing myself.

Mark has been working at the garden for nearly twenty years and is responsible for the part of the McBryde garden down the valley near the nursery and the Allerton. This area includes a small orchard of tropical fruit trees in the open grassy part of the valley west of the road, a beautiful hillside down to the stream, and a rock stair loop walk through a lush alcove on the east side of the valley.

In the morning we cleaned up the walkway and hillside west of the stream. I learned about Marantaceae which are distinguished by having petioles at the end of the stem connecting to the base of the leaves. Things had been unattended for a few weeks due to the hale construction, including gathering and preparing materials before the actual work of building started, so there are a lot to do and I think we pulled three cart-loads of waste out of there.

Before lunch we scouted the orchard for trimming work but the tree that needed work had already started to flower so we weren't about to touch them. I got to taste soursop that had fallen to the ground. It looks like a prickly pear: just as Mark described it, much like Jolly Rancher [TM] sour apple candy in a spongey flesh with plenty of black seeds in each compartment of the flesh.

After lunch we work on the walk across the stream where they have quite a collection of (botanical families) Zingiberales (including ginger and bananas) and Rubiaceae (which includes the coffee plant). Passing fronts dumped rain on us a few times - one time we had to huddle under trees because tourists had jumped into the cart - but we made good progress on about half of the area. 

I worked much of the time cleaning out the Heliconia (which look a lot like banana trees). Once they flower and the flower dries up the whole plant needs to be taken out. (I did not bring my camera but will be sure to next time, soon I hope.)