Foster Botanical Garden

In 1853, Queen Kalama leased 4.6 acres of land to William Hillebrand, a botanist as well as a physician; he and his wife built a home in the upper terrace area of the present garden. The magnificent trees which now tower over this area were planted by him.

Six years after his arrival, he and nine other Honolulu physicians petitioned to charter an organization called the Hawaiian Medical Society.  Today, it is the Hawaii Medical Association.

Appointed physician to the royal family at The Queen's Hospital (now The Queen's Medical Center), Hillebrand also served as chief physician at the hospital from 1860 to 1871.

While on a mission for the King to bring Chinese immigrants to work in the islands' sugar fields, Hillebrand introduced Common Myna birds to Honolulu (as well as "carrion crows, gold finches, Japanese finches, Chinese quail, ricebirds, Indian sparrows; golden, silver and Mongolian pheasants; and [two] axis deer from China and Java".)

After 20 years, Hillebrand returned to Germany, where he published Flora of the Hawaiian Islands in 1888.

In 1884, the Hillebrand property was sold Thomas R. Foster and his wife Mary E. Foster, who continued to develop the garden at their homesite.

In 1919, Foster leased two-acres to the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association for its experiment station, under the direction of Dr. Harold L. Lyon, a botanist and plant pathologist.

Lyon proceeded to build on the work of plant conservation and landscape architecture which Dr. Hillebrand and Mrs.  Foster had initiated.  By 1925, his plant nursery had produced over a million trees, most of them exceptional varieties which were not grown elsewhere.

Hundreds of new species of trees and plants had been imported, cultivated and distributed throughout the Hawaiian Islands.

Upon Mrs. Foster's death in 1930, the 5.5 acre site was bequeathed to the City and County of Honolulu as a public garden and was opened to the public on November 30, 1931, with Lyon as its first director.

Over a span of 27 years, Dr. Lyon introduced 10,000 new kinds of trees and plants to Hawaiʻi. The Foster Garden orchid collection was started with Dr. Lyon's own plants.

Through purchases by the City and gifts from individuals, under the directorship of Paul R. Weissich (1957-89), Foster Garden expanded to over 13.5-acres and also developed four additional sites on Oahu Island to create the 650-acre Honolulu Botanical Gardens system (including, Hoʻomaluhia Botanical Garden, Koko Crater Botanical Garden, Liliʻuokalani Botanical Garden and Wahiawa Botanical Garden.)

Taken as a whole, these five gardens feature rare species from tropical environments ranging from desert to rainforest, comprising the largest and most diverse tropical plant collection in the United States.

In addition to being a pleasant place to visit, Foster Botanical Garden is a living museum of tropical plants, some rare and endangered, which have been collected from throughout the world's tropics over a period of 150 years.

Today the garden consists of the Upper Terrace (the oldest part of the garden); Middle Terraces (palms, aroids, heliconias, gingers); Economic Garden (herbs, spices, dyes, poisons); Prehistoric Glen (primitive plants planted in 1965); Lyon Orchid Garden; and Hybrid Orchid Display.

It also contains a number of exceptional trees, including a Sacred Fig which is a clone descendant of the Bodhi tree that Buddha sat under for inspiration, a sapling of which was gifted to Mary Foster by Anagarika Dharmapala in 1913.

In 1975, the Hawaiʻi State Legislature found that rapid development had led to the destruction of many of the State's exceptional trees and passed Act 105 - The Exceptional Tree Act.

The Act recognizes that trees are valuable for their beauty and they perform crucial ecological functions.  All told, Foster Botanical Garden contains 25 of about 100 Oʻahu trees designated as exceptional.

In addition to this image, I have added other Foster Botanical Garden images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

http://www.facebook.com/peter.t.young.hawaii

http://plus.google.com/108947657421184863425

© 2012 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Germans In Hawaiʻi

The first Oktoberfest, held from October 12–October 17, 1810 in Munich, was to celebrate the occasion of the wedding of Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria and Princess Therese of Sachsen-Hildburghausen.

Because of its success, it was repeated annually, later also with an agricultural fair, dance, music and amusement rides.  The Germans call it “die Wiesn.”

Largely due to coincidence, the festival now generally starts in September and ends on or near October 3.  Since the reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990, the day has been recognized as the Day of German Unity and is a German public holiday.

While I suspect Germans and others in Hawaiʻi celebrated the annual beer-based parties in the past, I have not yet found references to them (I am still looking.)

However, I’ll use this occasion (between my sips of lager) to relate some history of Germans in Hawaiʻi.

Three Germans were among the sailors and crew aboard Captain James Cook first visit to the islands in 1778.  Johann Heinrich Zimmermann sailed on HMS Discovery and subsequently wrote an account of the voyage (his journals were published 3-years before Cook’s.)

A few years later, on a voyage to China in October 1796, Captain Henry Barber, from Bremen, Germany, sailing the English ship, Arthur, ran aground at Kalaeloa on Oʻahu. Captain Barber and his crew of 22 men took to the life boats. Six drowned.

Today, we refer to the location of where the survivors landed as “Barber’s Point,” however, the traditional name, Kalaeloa, is coming back into more common use.

In 1815, German scholar, Adelbert von Chamisso, was aboard the Russian brig Rurik, which Captain Otto von Kotzebue sailed to Hawaiʻi.  He was one of the first western scholars interested in the Hawaiian language, and reportedly wrote one of the first Hawaiian grammar books.

In a summary of his visit to the Islands, Chamisso noted, “’Arocha’ (Aloha) is the friendly greeting with which each man salutes the other and which is answered by a like expression.  Upon each occasion that one is greeted with ‘Arocha’ one answers ‘Arocha’ and goes ones way without turning around.”

Around this same time, a notorious German, Georg Anton Schäffer, representing the Russian-American Company of Alaska, arrived in Hawaiʻi to recover the cargo of a Russian trading ship wrecked at Waimea, Kauaʻi.

After first attempting to build a fort in Honolulu, he sailed to Kaua‘i and gained the confidence of King Kaumuali‘i.  Kaumuali‘i also used the engineering skills of Schäffer to lay out a plan for a fort (commonly referred to as Fort Elizabeth) which Kaumualiʻi had constructed next to his own residence.

The Russian flag was raised over his fort.  Hearing this, Kamehameha sent Captain Alexander Adams, a Scotsman who served in the navy of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i to gain control of the fort.  Schäffer was forced to leave Hawaii and Adams raised the Kingdom of Hawai‘i flag over the fort in October 1817.

German-born Paul Isenberg came to Kauaʻi in the 1850s to work at Līhuʻe Plantation on Kauaʻi.  He married Hannah Maria Rice, daughter of missionary-turned sugar-plantation owner William Harrison Rice.

Isenberg became manager of Līhuʻe Plantation in 1862. Along with his brothers, Isenberg played a prominent role in developing sugar plantations on Kauaʻi’s west side.

In 1881, Isenberg became a business partner with earlier German merchant Heinrich Hackfeld.  Through his business H. Hackfeld & Company, Hackfeld is one of the most prominent, and prosperous, Germans to Hawaiʻi.

His company would become American Factors, shortened to Amfac, one of Hawaiʻi’s “Big 5” companies (with interests in sugar plantations, shipping and other entities.)  This included the Liberty House department store, originally called "B. F. Ehlers", after Hackfeld’s nephew.

World War I proved catastrophic for the Germans in Hawai'i who with the entry of the United States into the war had become enemy aliens overnight; the Isenbergs and Hackfields lost control of their company during World War I.

Dr. William Hillebrand, a German researcher, played an important role in public health. He was the founding physician of Queen's Hospital in Honolulu during the 1860s.   Hillebrand was an avid collector of plants; his property eventually became Foster Botanical Garden.

Claus Spreckels (1828–1908) was perhaps the most successful German-American immigrant entrepreneur of the late-nineteenth century; he was one of the ten richest Americans of his time.

The first industry in which Spreckels succeeded was quite typical for German immigrants: beer brewing. Though profitable, he sold his beer operation in 1863 and switched to a new field that would make him rich: sugar.

Spreckels founded the Hawaiian Commercial Company, which quickly became the largest and best-equipped sugar plantation in the islands.  The career of the “sugar king” of California, Hawaiʻi and the American West consisted of building and breaking monopolies in sugar, transport, gas, electricity, real estate, newspapers, banks and breweries.

In more cultural contributions, Captain Henri Berger of Berlin is well remembered in for his decades of conducting the Royal Hawaiian Band. He was called “The Father of Hawaiian Music” by Queen Liliʻuokalani.  Among others, he wrote music to lyrics by King Kalākaua for the state anthem “Hawaiʻi Ponoʻi.”

So, as you celebrate Oktoberfest (yes, while it is not clear if it was celebrated before, it certainly is celebrated here, now,) remember some of the many contributions of the Germans to Hawaiʻi.  In addition, I have added some images related to the German influence in Hawaiʻi in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/peter.t.young.hawaii

© 2012 Hoʻokuleana LLC