Department of Agriculture

HONOLULU – The Urban Garden Center in Pearl City will host an event this weekend to promote home gardening and healthy eating.  This free event is an inaugural collaborative effort combining programs in agriculture and nutrition between the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) and the Hawaii Departments of Health and Agriculture.

The free event is scheduled for:

Saturday, August 9, 2008
9:00 a.m. to noon (Governor Linda Lingle to arrive at 10:30 a.m.)
CTAHR’s Urban Garden Center, 955 Kamehameha Highway (behind Public Storage and Home Depot) in Pearl City

With the cost of food rising, families in Hawaii may look at home gardening as a healthy family activity that will also promote healthy eating and help to stretch the family food budget.  At the event, the Urban Garden Center’s Master Gardeners, volunteers who have a green thumbs, will be giving out some vegetable seedlings and also selling packets of seeds that have been developed at CTAHR specifically for Hawaii’s climate.  There will also be plants available for sale.  CTAHR and the Departments of Health and Agriculture will have displays and information on agriculture and nutrition.

Governor Linda Lingle will tour the garden and join the gardeners and keiki in planting and harvesting vegetables.

“We are all feeling the crunch of higher food costs,” said CTAHR Dean Andrew Hashimoto.  “Being able to harvest fresh, nutritious fruits and vegetables at home not only saves money, but can be a fun, healthy activity for the whole family.”

“All farmers have a natural passion to raise a crop from seed to harvest,” said Sandra Lee Kunimoto, Chairperson of the Hawaii Board of Agriculture.  “We encourage youngsters to learn about growing their own crops at home and perhaps they may see a career in agriculture in their future.”

The Urban Garden Center’s “Second Saturday in the Gardens,” opens the Urban Garden Center on the second Saturdays of each month.  The Urban Garden Center is a one-stop outdoor learning center for home gardeners, students and horticulture professionals.  The gardens display collections of turf grasses, ground covers, hedges and flowering trees, tropical fruits and vegetables and other plants. 

The Children’s Garden features a story book house filled with plants, a caterpillar tunnel, a pizza garden, animal garden and a Hawaiian alphabet tree.

For more information on the center go to:  https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/ougc/

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