Community Workday: Surfrider's Kaka'ako Ocean Friendly Garden

If you’re looking for an opportunity to get your hands in the dirt, help keep the ocean pristine, and perhaps even harvest fruit and veggies to take home, keep an eye out for the next Garden Workday at Surfrider Foundation’s Kaka’ako Ocean Friendly Garden.

Surfrider’s Oahu Chapter partnered with Permablitz Hawaii in 2019 to transform the 10,000-square-foot empty lot in Kaka’ako into a thriving food forest. The project serves a dual purpose: It boosts local food security and helps protect the ocean — a core mission of Surfrider — by preventing stormwater runoff and trash from polluting the water.

Located across from UH Manoa’s John A. Burns School of Medicine at the Kaka’ako waterfront, the garden is surrounded by a chain link fence but nature refuses to acknowledge the boundary: a volunteer lilikoi vine bursts forth with a striking purple bloom in the grassy area of the sidewalk…

and a blue butterfly pea grows over the fence, inviting passersby to pick its flowers for tea.

At their Aug. 24 workday, about six community members including myself, a mother and college-aged daughter and a father and his young son, joined several Surfrider and Permablitz volunteers for a morning of weeding, trimming, clearing pathways, repotting plants, and other light garden work.

Volunteers are asked to bring water in a reusable bottle and to wear sunscreen, hat, long plants and sleeves, and natural bug repellent. They do have garden gloves as well as tools for volunteers, but if you’re particular about such things, you’re welcome to bring your own.

After a brief introduction and orientation, volunteers choose where they want to work: the first third of the garden is taken up on the Diamond Head side by a large composting mound steps away from a mural-covered shipping container that houses all the gardening tools and provides a foundation for a shaded nursery area.

Raised beds and garden areas edged with Spanish tiles make the up the other two-thirds of the garden, and in between is an open area with chairs and a colorful memorial dedicated to Heather Riley, a beloved garden volunteer who died in a plane crash in 2017.

Throughout the workday we were encouraged to enjoy the fruits of our labor: lilikoi fruits were already picked and offered in a bag for us to take, moringa (also known locally as malunggay) cuttings and fruits were placed on a table, and Surinam cherries were plucked fresh from the tree for tasting.

I started out in a section against the back fence with three large raised bed gardens filled with the withered remains of blue butterfly pea bushes. The bushes were entangled with lilikoi vines snaking their way over the fence, and chest-high weeds filled the area between the raised beds and fence, covering an outdoor sink.

I say started out because it was soon evident the job required more than one set of hands. With the help of two others, we cleared the beds so they were ready for planting and I set to work taking down the weeds behind the beds. It was hard work to cut down the bushes and walk them to the compost heat as the morning got hotter, but it was very gratifying to see how clean it looked and how the lilikoi vines could dangle freely from the fence.

The workday came to a close two hours later at 11 am - just in time before we could got truly pounded the midday sun. It was exhausting but fulfilling to see how much our group had accomplished in so little time. We were invited to join future workdays at the garden as well as beach cleanups sponsored by Surfrider - I’m looking forward to being a regular volunteer at the garden, maybe I’ll see you there!

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