Customer Reviews

Growing Hawaii's Native Plants: A Simple Step-by-Step Approach for Every Species

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Great book. It gives the common name, the latin name and the Hawaiian name of plants we find here in Hawai'i. 416 pages chock full of easy to read and apply methods of growing Hawaiian plants. Lavishly illustrated, generous size of 9 by 11 inches, this is a must have for growers, artists and students of Hawaiian plants. This is the best $45 I have spent on books in a long time. Thanks to the author and publisher.

for anyone that is a real freak about native hawaiian plant
growing,this book is going to be your bible.along with easy to
understand descriptions on the growing of native hawaiian plants
the photos make this book a book for everybodies coffee tables.
i know kerin personally and have been in on her growth as the
foremost authority on the supject of hawaiian plants.she comes
by her knowledge through being friends with and close to the
masters in the field.no college degree for this girl,just,
love for hawaiian plants.great book for all.

One of the best horticultural books I've seen (and I own too many!).
Lots of information, not only on the plants but also on propagation and diseases.
Superbly organized and well indexed.
If you live on Hawaii and have a yard this book is a must.

This is an excellent reference book - well organized with great photos and an extensive number of native Hawaiian plants included with hands-on, practical advice on how to propagate and care for the plants. There are several indices: General Index (for how-to items like air layering, pest control and management, transplanting, etc.), Family Index, Genera Index, and Hawaiian and Common Plant Names Index. This makes it easy to find what you're looking for. For each plant, there's a photo, a general description of the plant, info on where it's found (critical for native plants because of the different microclimates and soils in Hawaii), propagation and cultivation info, outplanting info, and pests. There's also a quick guide to the left of the photo showing how much sun the plant needs, range (indiginous or endemic - whether it's found in Hawaii and other places or just Hawaii), description (shrub, tree, vine, groundcover, etc.), and propagation (seeds, cuttings, etc.) The quick guide helps the user to rapidly screen the plant for his/her purposes without spending a lot of time reading the text.

I am a Certified Arborist and whenever I work on community projects where people are planting native plants, I give them a copy of this book.

I bought this book for my son who had recently moved to Hawaii. He is really interested in organic farming and landscaping and he found this book very helpful when identifying native plants.

I bought this book because I wanted to learn to make a useful garden (edible or helpful to other plants or animals) with the local plants, but found this book rather unhelpful because of MY lack of knowledge. The book is organized in alphabetical order according to the family name of the plants. You can also look up the Hawaiian name of the plants via the appendix.

What the book does not tell you is what the uses of most of these plants are or if they are even edible. Some passages will mention something vague like "leaf used in tincture for fevers" but does not elaborate. I have to use a plant identification guide as a reference to this reference to figure out if a plant will be useful to me or not.

Gardeners who wish to grow the more popular fruits and veggies be warned: this book only tells you how to grow endemic and indigenous plants. That means you won't find out how to grow breadfruit or papayas or any of the popular fruits that are also found in other parts of the world.

I can foresee this book being useful when I go hiking and have an identification guide, find a useful plant, and go home to look up how to grow it.

I got the book thinking that it is useful for starting a veggie garden in Hawaii. The book is pretty flimsy and light on details. Most of the information is pretty generic. I would suggest you save your money and buy something better.

Awesome book on Native hawaiian plants. Very easy to follow intructions for propagation, germination, and outplanting.

I'd love to review this book, as requested by Amazon.com. However, It is still somewhere on a ship, enjoying a leisurely cruise to my island home in Hawaii. For some unfathomable reason Amazon decided to ship it "parcel post," without informing me in advance. Soooooooo, I still haven't received the book, ordered more than two weeks ago, and probably won't receive it "until my ship comes in." Wonderful!