Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Aloha! Welcome to the newest issue of the Grow Good Newsletter, a newsletter where we share what we are up to and how you can grow more food, plant more native plants, and bring nature and abundance back from mauka to makai.
A word from Paul Arinaga, Executive Director of Grow Good Hawaii
Aloha mai kākou,
A lot has happened since my last missive! First, the grant freeze was lifted so we were able to resume operations after a 2-week pause and staff furlough. Woo-hoo!
Mahalo nui loa to all those who supported our fundraising campaign. We raised over $16,000 plus another $20,000 from an anonymous donor. Thinking the unsolicited letter was yet more junk mail, I almost threw it away without opening it. Fortunately, I did open it and discovered a check for $20,000! It’s nice to feel that our work is appreciated.
Aside from surviving financially, we took another big step forward with the launch of the Go Native Community Portal. The Portal is a place where native plant enthusiasts can meet and connect, identify their growing zone using the interactive map, as well as search the filterable plant database to get planting ideas. Please register to join this growing community.
Since we last spoke, we also held a meeting of Go Native Plant Ambassadors under the shade of the Livable Hawaii Kai Hui’s hale at the Keawāwa Wetland, as well as Go Native neighborhood meetings in Maunawili and Olomana.
The Trees for People Project has also hit several milestones. We broke ground on our nursery in Waimānalo at the campus of partner Hui Mālama O Ke Kai, and it’s now 98% complete. We’ve also been onboarding 12 ambassador gardeners and are about to start general distribution of trees and agroforestry “kits” to Waimānalo and Wai‘anae residents. Over 500 people signed up in Wai‘anae and Waimānalo!
Grow Good Hawaii has also welcomed new members to our team—making it even stronger—as well as two new board members with strong backgrounds in public service. There’s lots more to tell, so please read on for the full story. As always, thank you for your support and engagement.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” (Yoko Ono)
Me ke aloha,
Paul Arinaga, Founder & Executive Director
In this Issue
- The Approach
- Overview of Our Projects
- Meet the Team
- Special Features
- Upcoming Events
Grow Good Hawaii’s work is based on the concept of Biodiversity Islands (kipuka) or Applied Nucleation. The idea is to create patches of green throughout urban areas. These can be food forests, native forests, or mixed forests. Collectively, these can form an urban forest that produces food, shade, and enjoyment for people; habitat and food for native animals; preserves genetic diversity; and restores nature from mauka to makai. Our strategy is to help individual ‘ohana (“residential”) as well as civic groups and businesses (“institutional”), and to also focus on streams and estuaries (“riparian restoration”).
Trees for People: Growing an Urban Community Food & Native Forest
After a brief setback in February, Grow Good Hawaii and its partners have been hard at work on the Trees for People project. For example, the Grow Good team had a planting day right after the project funding was restored in March to plant an agroforestry demonstration garden at Hui Mālama O Ke Kai Foundation.
Snapshots of just some of the plants we planted on our first planting day!
Only happy smiles from the team after coming back from our brief pause!
At our latest planting day in August, we are finally seeing the garden come to life with the many layers of trees, shrubs, and food crops all existing together!
This demonstration garden will showcase the benefits of syntropic agroforestry, which includes year-round production of food and a low level of maintenance once the garden is established. Additionally, this garden will be used as an educational tool to show what agroforestry can look like in a backyard! Our Program Director, Hilary Parkinson, planned this agroforest around an existing ʻulu tree on the site, and created this blueprint to help guide this garden to life! Check it out!
Interested in checking out the garden and helping us maintain it? Join us at one of our work days. Details can be found in the Upcoming Events section of the newsletter!
Here are some accomplishments from in this past quarter:
- Promoted the Trees for People pre-registration form and received over 500 pre-registrations!
- Built the Grow Good Hawaii nursery! The nursery will be where we propagate fruit trees and various understory plants
- Recruited 12 Ambassador Gardeners! Ambassador Gardeners are ambassadors of the Trees for People project who will share their experience of starting an agroforestry garden with their communities.
- Hired 4 interns into our workforce development program! Officially known as Agroforestry Roving Assistants, these interns will learn a variety of trade and interpersonal skills in the environmental field and receive mentorship to advance in their careers.
Itʻs been a rollercoaster this first half of 2025, but the Grow Good team is more motivated than ever to reach our goals and bring our vision to life. Mahalo nui loa to all who have donated to our organization. We are so excited to continue to show you that your donation is funding amazing work!
A Note to Trees for People Pre-Registrants:
Thank you to all who signed up to receive a tree and garden! Thank you also for telling us your preferences. We’ll do our best to get you the tree you want.
We just wanted to let you know that—together with our partners—we will be starting to distribute trees this summer. Over 500 people in Wai‘anae and Waimānalo signed up, so it may take us a while to get to you (we are giving away trees on a first-come, first-served basis), but we will do our best to get you your tree soon. At the same time, we don’t want to rush this process because an important part of our approach is to ensure that trees survive and thrive. That’s why we’re also providing as much technical support as we can to those who need or want it, rather than just giving out trees willy-nilly. More on that later.
Go Native: Growing a Native Hawaiian Urban Forest
The biggest news from the Go Native Project is that the Go Native Community Portal and web app are now live at www.gonativeplants.org.
The portal is a virtual community where native plant enthusiasts can meet and connect. It includes:
- A list of nurseries that provides locations statewide where people can purchase native Hawaiian and canoe plants.
- An interactive map to help people identify their growing zone (climate zone) just by typing in their address or dropping a pin.
- A database of 216 native Hawaiian and Polynesian-introduced “canoe” plants that is filterable based on a range of horticultural and landscaping attributes so people can easily refine their search for planting ideas. They can then save their list or export it as a CSV file. We’ve also included ethnobotanical information on the various uses of plants (such as for lei making) and environmental information, such as which plants are food or habitat for specific native wildlife (for example, ‘elepaio).
- A directory of Native Plant Ambassadors that people can join to offer their expertise or connect with fellow native plant enthusiasts and experts.
Kaiāulu O Kuliʻouʻou – Creating Hawaiʻi’s First Urban Forest
Kaiāulu O Kuliʻouʻou is one of the next major steps in the Go Native Project. The plan is to mobilize residents in the ʻili of Kuliʻouʻou (Waikīkī Ahupuaʻa, Kona Moku) to create gardens of native Hawaiian and canoe plants. These can then form the nucleus of a Native Hawaiian Urban Forest in Kuliʻouʻou Valley, which could then connect with restoration efforts by our partners and friends at The Aloha Tree Alliance (mauka) and Mālama Maunalua (makai). To the best of our knowledge, this would be the very first intentional urban forest—focused on a specific geography—in Hawaiʻi!
We are excited to share that the first garden has been installed! John and Sandra Correa grew a lot of their own native plants for the garden. Among them are endangered species like ʻohai and nāʻū. This garden is only the first of many that will be installed in the Kuliʻouʻou region! We plan to create 15 more native plant kīpuka in Kuli‘ou‘ou through 2026, and have already begun working with several other Correa ‘ohana households. Grow Good Hawaii is also pleased to have hired Tara Morisato (formerly of the Aloha Tree Alliance) as a part-time contractor to help spearhead our efforts in Kuli‘ou‘ou.
Just some of the many native Hawaiian plants being planted! First picture: Oʻhai, Second picture: Nāʻū surrounded by ʻIlima papa.
Year of Our Community Forest
2025 is the Year of Our Community Forests! The campaign was created by a partnership of tree lovers, including multiple partners, the DLNR Division of Forestry & Wildlife, and its Kaulunani Urban & Community Forestry Program. To celebrate the Year of Our Community Forests, Grow Good Hawaii is working with a local artist to paint a lifelike mural of an urban forest at the corner of King St. and Smith St. in Honolulu Chinatown. We asked them some questions about the project. Check it out!
Q: What inspires your art? Who is your biggest influence?
A: The entire creative process inspires me—from that first spark of curiosity to the moment it grows into something meaningful and community-driven.
My biggest influences are local painters like Mark Brown, Mark Howard, and Billy Zwick.
Q: Grow Good Hawai‘i’s goal for this mural is to “trick” people into seeing the urban forest as if it’s already there. Do you have any personal goals for this mural?
A: My personal goal is to create a symbolic umbilical cord between the urban landscape of Chinatown and the rural beauty of Hawai‘i’s natural environments.
Q: What plants would you want to see if your neighborhood became an urban forest?
A: We already see beautiful plants like ginger and hala trees in my neighborhood.
If our neighborhood became an urban forest, I’d love to see more fruit trees—something everyone could enjoy and benefit from.
Q: Anything else you’d like to share?
A: I hope this mural offers our neighborhood a contemporary visual that inspires, educates, and uplifts—bringing dignity and value to everyone in our city
Puʻuhonua: Distributed, Scalable Phytoremediation of the Ala Wai Watershed Using Native Hawaiian Plants
The Pu‘uhonua team presented their results to date at the ‘Ola Waikīkī workshop on July 17th during the Stormwater Quality Best Management Practice (BMP) Conference organized by the City & County of Honolulu. The goal of the Pu‘uhonua Project is to show that simple, low-tech, and low-cost floating wetlands of native plants can have a measurable impact in improving water quality (including reducing eutrophication) and biodiversity in the Ala Wai Watershed. Biodiversity is considered an indicator of water quality as documented in the Hawaii Stream Index of Biological Integrity. Animals that inhabited the mats were seined, identified, and counted individually. The mats were found to be successful at attracting large amounts of both native and non-native wildlife despite the mats’ small size. As part of this project, over 800 invasive animals have been removed and relocated to ornamental aquariums. In addition, the mats have served as habitats for over 900 native animals at any given time. The percentage of native animals—53%—was high compared with previous surveys on streams in this area without pu‘uhonua. When tested in-situ in smaller tanks, the mats showed the ability to absorb nutrients such as nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, and particularly ammonia. Future testing will determine the ability of ‘ākulikuli (Sesuvium portulacastrum) to absorb heavy metals in its roots, stems, and leaves.
Grow Good Founder and Executive Director Paul Arinaga flanked by ‘Iolani students Oliver Physioc-Fox (left) and Christopher Aguillon (right) at the 2025 Stormwater Quality BMP Workshop, ‘Ola Waikīkī Breakout Session.
None of these projects could have happened without our amazing team of staff and partners. In each newsletter, we will take a moment to introduce you to a member of the team supporting our projects:
Meet Kalani!
Kalani Matsumura is the Agroforestry Technical Manager at Grow Good Hawaii and manages the growing and gardening operations for the Trees for People Project in Waimānalo. He has a diverse background in horticulture in Hawaiʻi, having served for several years as a junior extension agent for urban horticulture in the UH Mānoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, and coordinator of the UH Master Gardener Program on Oʻahu. Kalani has a background in native Hawaiian plant conservation from working with The Nature Conservancy at Honouliuli Preserve and the Hawaiian Rare Plant Program at Lyon Arboretum. Other experience includes various landscaping and nursery gigs. Kalani has an MS in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences from CTAHR.
Q: What is your favorite fruit?
A: I love so many fruits, but nothing beats a good mango, especially Haden and Rapoza.
Q: What is your favorite native Hawaiian plant?
A: Another tough question, but I’m currently into native ferns. I appreciate palaʻā, which looks so graceful but can endure some harsh environments. I love how it looks in lei.
Photo credit: Forest and Kim Starr
Lā Hōnua at Hui Mālama O Ke Kai Foundation
To celebrate Lā Hōnua (Earth Day) 2025, Grow Good Hawaiʻi and Hui Mālama O Ke Kai hosted a Community ʻĀina Day. Our staff worked together with the keiki of Hui Mālama O Ke Kai to weed, water, and pot up native cuttings. We enriched our hana with ʻike, learning inoa wahi pana, moʻolelo, and plant identification. Lastly, we played a game where we identified how plants came to Hawaiʻi. The keiki had a blast running around the room during the game, and they were excited to share their guesses for how Hawaiʻi got many of its plants. It was surely a beautiful day to celebrate Earth Day!
Native Plant Ambassador Meetings Recap
We had the third plenary meeting of Native Plant Ambassadors on May 24 at Hale ‘Ike Ola o Maunalua at the Keawāwa Wetland, courtesy of our partner, the Livable Hawaii Kai Hui. Aside from updates and discussion, the highlight of the event was a “speed charrette” in which we split into two groups to design the native plant garden for one of the participants. In just one hour, we were able to come up with a surprisingly detailed plan, including potential plant combinations and a plot map, which shows the power of putting many minds together.
More recently, on June 14th, we held a Go Native Neighborhood Meeting at the Olomana home of Kristen Nalani Kane, Executive Director of Hui o Ko‘olaupoko (https://www.huihawaii.org), a windward O‘ahu nonprofit partnering with Grow Good Hawaii. The meeting was attended by about 15 very enthusiastic native plant gardeners, including members of the neighborhood association who plan to strongly promote native plants. In addition to talking story about growing native plants, participants learned more about rain gardens, little fire ant mitigation measures, and soil health.
In addition to getting many more people to use the Go Native Community Portal, the Go Native team is focusing on recruiting more Native Plant Ambassadors and getting them more engaged in promoting native plant gardens (biodiversity islands or kipuka) in their neighborhoods.
Do you want to become a Native Plant Ambassador and join one of our upcoming meetings? Reply to this email with your interest (info@growgoodhawaii.org)!
Grow Good Hawaii starts the ʻĀina Momona Workshop and Workday Series
In an effort to build community resilience in the Koʻolau region by promoting backyard agroforestry, Grow Good Hawaii and Hui Mālama O Ke Kai launched the ʻĀina Momona workshop and Workday series.
We had our first workshop in July, “Growing a Food Forest in Your Backyard: Getting Started with Agroforestry”. Together, Grow Good Hawaii and workshop participants walked the agroforestry demo garden at Hui Mālama O Ke Kai Foundation’s campus, weeded the ti leaf patches, and learned about the different types of crops and plants we can grow in agroforestry. We also created a blueprint plan for our backyards! And the cherry on top? Everyone left with māmaki and chaya to start forests of their own!
At our second event in August, more than 50 workday participants came to tend to the demonstration garden. We had a fun day of planting groundcovers, kalo huli, shrubs, and more!
Our ʻĀina Momona series is on the third Saturday of every month. Our next workshop and workday is on September 20, 2025, from 10 am to 1 pm at Hui Mālama O Ke Kai Foundation.
Mahalo to all who attended our first two events!
Grow Good Hawaii starts the ʻĀina Momona Workshop and Workday Series
Grow Good Hawaii and our partners have been in the news recently. Check out these articles:
- “Growing and Eating Locally”, which highlights Grow Good Hawaii and features a quote from Paul.
- “Celebrating 50 Years Of Community Gardens In Honolulu”, written by our board member Anna Mines.
2025 Honolulu Charter Amendment Proposal
The Honolulu Charter Commission is accepting Charter amendment proposals from community members and organizations. Grow Good Hawaii is asking for your support to amplify amendments regarding the “right to food” and “developing alternative models for community food production and distribution”. Fill out the form at here!
1. ʻĀina Momona Workday at Hui Mālama O Ke Kai Foundation: September 20, 2025
- Register at https://forms.gle/KUm7vhmw5HULS1Dv5
- Time: September 20, 2025, 10 AM – 12 PM workday, followed by a workshop from 12 PM – 1 PM.
- Where: Hui Mālama O Ke Kai Foundation, 41-477 Hihimanu St, Waimanalo, HI 96795
2. Ke Kula Nui O Waimānalo Workday: September 21, 2025
- Join Ke Kula Nui O Waimānalo for a community ‘Āina Workday! With the support of Grow Good Hawaii, Ke Kula Nui O Waimānalo is building a food forest using agroforestry principles. The garden will show how anyone can start a food forest in their backyard. Registration is open to everyone. Lunch will be provided. Come build the food forest with us!
- Register at https://forms.gle/XKxvWHEhjfvucDHo9
- Time: September 21, 2025, 8 AM – 12 PM workday, lunch provided
- Where: Waimānalo, RSVP for address
3. U-Pick at Hoa ʻĀina o Mākaha: September 27, 2025
- Hoa ʻĀina O Makaha is one of the partners helping to distribute trees for the Trees for People project, and their incredible U-Pick events are coming back! Check out the upcoming event on September 27, 2025. There is no pre-registration required, and everything is by donation. We hope to see you there!
- Time: September 27, 2025 from 8 AM – 12 PM
- Where: Hoa ʻĀina O Mākaha, 84-766 Lahaina St, Waianae, HI 96792
