HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – There’s a family-owned farm in Central Oahu where you can find local produce, native plants and workshops to find your green thumb.
Mari’s Garden is tucked away in the middle of Mililani neighborhood on Makapipipi Street.
Owner Fred Lau was already running a landscaping business and purchased 18 acres in 2008.
“I bought this property that used to belong to Watanabe Floral, and it was just overgrown with weeds,” Fred said. “I wanted to have a property in central Oahu where I could stage my landscape plants.”
“My eldest son graduated from college in 2010, and he wanted to raise food, so we ended up starting to grow lettuce,” Fred added.
“We started growing cucumbers, tomatoes, everything on the all the this produce that was crazy and that’s how Mari’s Garden started being built.”
The garden is named after Fred’s daughter, Mariko Lau.
“‘Freddy’s Garden’ sounded a little bad. ‘Brendan’s Garden’ didn’t make sense, my other son, Tyler, ‘Tyler’s garden,’ that sounded like a book,” Fred said. “So, I said no. We’re gonna name it ‘Mari’s Gardens.’”
“My two older brothers work here, my mom does all of our bookkeeping and our back-end things and my dad kind of runs the whole farm,” said Mariko Lau. “So, it’s been fun to work together. And yeah, continue to do new things every day.”
“We traveled all over the place trying to figure out what the best thing to bring back to Hawaii was,” said Fred.
“And that’s why we landed on hydroponic production, growing plants on a commercial scale on a very small footprint, using as little resources as possible and keeping it sustainable for Hawaii.”
The garden has bloomed into a place of gathering and an educational space for sustainable living and urban farming.
There’s also a butterfly garden.
“And we wanted this to be a butterfly garden for the monarch butterflies, so we planted a bunch of plants that butterflies like and we’re trying to save the monarchs,” Mariko said.
The farm also includes an aquaponic system.
“Water is pumped up through our pump over there, runs through our tables and runs through the back of these tables and what happens is water rises in these tables, and it empties right when it hits the base of the roots,” said Farm Manager of Mari’s Gardens, Travis Araki.
“And it’ll come right back into the pond and recirculates our water to show that we can grow sustainable food with basically fish and natural things from our earth.”
Mari’s Gardens is hosting a Farm Fair at their Mililani location on Saturday, July 19 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Here’s the application form for interested vendors.
In our Holoholo series, Jolanie Martinez takes us across the islands to find hidden gems, fun places, and interesting people. Do you have a hidden gem or story in your town? Let us know about it at holoholo@hawaiinewsnow.com.
Copyright 2025 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.
Comments are closed.