Liliʻuokalani Gardens is a traditional Japanese style park. Located in Makaoku, Hilo, Hawaiʻi, it is freshened by sea breezes and commands a view of Hilo Bay. Beautifully landscaped, it is an ideal location for picnics, strolling, and weddings, and also offers lovely quiet spaces for solitude and meditation.
The garden has its origins in the Territorial Days of Hawaiʻi.
Liliʻuokalani Gardens at Zazzle.
On the third day of April 1917, Lucius E. Pinkham, Governor of the Territory of Hawaiʻi, signed an act designating “17.0 acres, more or less,” a “certain tract of government land at Waiakea, South Hilo, County of Hawaiʻi, Territory of Hawaiʻi, as a public park. . . to be known as Liliuokalani Garden.”
Of the park, the 1917 Senate report said, ” That after due and careful consideration we find that the object of the bill is to provide a park in the suburbs of the City of Hilo where can be constructed gardens surrounding silvery lakes and about rock-bound inlets of the sea of great beauty on the order of Japanese landscape gardening that will add greatly to the beauty of this approach to the city. . . We recommend the passage of the bill.”
During the Monarchy era in Hawaiʻi, the land had belonged to Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani, who gifted it to Queen Liliʻuokalani. The Queen, tradition says, around 1907 gifted the five acre fishpond, Waihonu, in Makaoku to the people of Hilo for the purpose of creating a Japanese “tea garden.”
In the “high society” of the Victorian era, building a Japanese tea garden was “was the social thing to do,” Cannon-Eger says. Liliʻuokalani had a keen interest in Japan. She was still encouraging Kaʻiulani to marry a prince of Japan, and the young princess was dressed in kimono for the many Japanese-themed parties which were the rage. All the social events where everyone who was anyone attended were adorned with Japanese lanterns, bamboo and paper parasols, and folding fans. By that time, Japanese comprised 43 percent of the population of Hawaiʻi.
Liliʻuokalani, and Hilo residents Mrs. CC Kennedy and Mrs Machida, spearheaded the effort to install a Japanese tea garden in Hilo.
In 1914, Laura (Mrs CC) Kennedy, her husband, joined other business people of Honolulu who made a trip to Japan. While visiting the Golden Pavilion, the famous Japanese park at Kyoto, Kennedy conceived the idea that the old Waiakea fish ponds could be turned into a park just as beautiful.
Mrs. Machida was president of the Hilo Japanese Women’s Friendship Association of Hilo – Fujin Shinkokai – which had formed in 1912 to seek a location for lanterns and a potential tea house. The name of the group is carved on the two oldest stone lanterns in the garden. The Fujin Shinkokai acquired the lanterns from Japan, in hopes of installing them in a Japanese garden at Moʻoheau. That park, however, was bounded by the rail road tracks, commercial buildings, and the ball park. With nowhere to grow, they looked toward Makaoku.
Liliʻuokalani was a frequent visitor to Hilo, and encouraged her friends to support the park. It must have been a great pleasure to her to learn in April of 1917 that the bill to make her former lands into a tea garden had been enacted, with additional lands, to comprise a 17-acre parcel, though she would never see the land as a park. As construction on Lili`uokalani Gardens began in November of 1917 the beloved aliʻi passed away. She was 79.
In September of 1918, a tsunami inundated the area. Nevertheless, in 1919, Liliʻuokalani Garden was completed and opened to the public.
Another tsunami hit Hilo’s shore in February 1923, damaging the park. Larger, and deadly, tsunami in April 1946, and May 1960 wreaked further havoc as the huge waves, as high as 36 feet, crashed into the island and churned across the gardens. But each time, the park was rebuilt.
In 1927, management of Liliʻuokalani Gardens was transferred from the State of Hawaiʻi to Hawaiʻi County. Mokuola was added to the park in 1933.
In 1972, Mrs. Machida’s dream of a traditional tea house was realized. A chashitsu, both the traditional tea house and garden, were installed. They were a gift of Dr. Shoshitsu Sen, at the time he was 15th Grand Tea Master of Urasenke Foundation in Kyoto. Arsonists destroyed the tea house in 1994. It was re-built in the present location in 1997, making this year the 20th anniversary of the Shoroan Orasenki tea house.
In 1976 Bicentennial Park was added, extending the park by three acres.
In 2002, then governor Ben Cayatano provided utility easements and added Rakuen and Isles, a 0.443-acre shoreline park popular for fishing and picnicking, increasing the park holdings to 24.67 acres.
Past president Bill Eger says, “Friends of Lili`uiokalani Gardens is working closely with the Hawai`i County Department of Parks and Recreation and the separately funded Japanese Tea House to bring our garden to the perfection it deserves for the thousands of visitors expected from all over the world during the first centennial year, 2017.”
Each year, on a Saturday near Liliʻuokalani’s September 2 birthday, a hula festival is held at the garden.