(Waves crashing) (Wind rustling, water flowing) (Instrumental music over sounds of water) Earth, air, water, and fire above us.

All readily available, or are they?

(Instrumental music) The landscape has been a perennial source of inspiration for artists.

Rich, diverse, stimulating, tranquil, and healing.

The landscape architect refers to nature directly and perpetually in his attempt to shape man's environment.

Water, soil, plants and rock serve him as the material for his art.

With a training that reaches into both science and art, the landscape architect designs with nature.

(Instrumental music) Long ago, the early Hawaiians divided their land into wedge shaped districts or ahupuaʻa, extending from the forested mountains to the coastal plains.

Today what we know is Mānoa Valley was once carefully organized into fish ponds and paddy fields, well irrigated by flowing canals.

A European botanist on the Vancouver expedition of 1793 looked up from his arrival at Waikīkī and marveled at the little fields planted with taro, yams and sweet potatoes.

Each watered in a most ingenious manner by dividing the general stream into little aqueducts.

The soil seemed to repay the labor of the people with luxuriant productions.

The area, envied for its abundance, was the goal of King Kamehameha's final offensive in his conquest of the Hawaiian Islands in 1795, when eight miles of Waikīkī shoreline was covered by over 1,000 of his canoes.

Owned by the University of Hawaiʻi, this Kānewai Cultural Garden is an authentic recreation of an ancient irrigation complex.

Here, students may learn to cultivate native plants, early planting methods and the traditional Hawaiian sensitivity to land.

Caring for the land and aloha ʻāina - love for the land - are not easily dismissed.

Here is artist Duane Preble.

Most of the destructive things that have been happening in the environment have been happening because of human decisions.

As human beings, we do have the responsibility for our choices in terms of environmental design choices.

I think the land is alive in ways that we are just beginning to, to really consciously understand.

As an artist, I've, I've been trained to be aware of what's in front of my eyes and what I, what pleases me or what intrigues me or what, whatever seems to be significant.

The sounds as well as what we see here are very, very restful.

I mean, that's why people love to go to parks.

Kapiʻolani Park is the largest urban park in Honolulu.

Once the scene of horse racing and polo playing, today, its versatility allows for many games to be played.

When King Kalākaua spoke at the dedication of this park in 1877, he said, "Certainly, no better use can be made of some portion of our new prosperity than in creating on this breezy plain, a resort and place of innocent refreshment for all who wish to leave the dust of the town streets."

Kapi'olani Park is, is perhaps our most significant park in the state.

Honolulu parks planner Steve Salis recognizes the value of city parks.

For example, in Honolulu, we expect 200,000 more people, residents that is over the next 20 years.

That means communities as large as Kailua and Kāneʻohe combined will be living on this island.

The planted landscape holds the soil, modifies the climate, and provides a windbreak.

The Banyan Court of McCoy Pavilion is, is a unique example of landscape architecture in Honolulu.

The Banyan Court at McCoy Pavilion was completed in 1937.

It was designed with the theme of Mughal, India in mind.

Most designers and people who are acquainted, acquainted in the planning or urban design fields don't have a great deal of regard for Honolulu and often come to Hawaiʻi for rest and recreation and usually on the outer islands.

When they do venture to Honolulu, they have one look at Waikīkī and scream in horror and go to the airport, but some of them explore the city and find small gems like Ala Moana, Ala Moana Park, the Banyan court, the Mother Waldron Park and a number of parks like Mother Waldron, which were an example of good design, good planning, interesting construction.

They're fun as well as functional.

By one definition, intelligence is the ability to respond adaptively to the environment.

Unlike other animals that know only want or fear, man with his thought and speech may recall what is absent.

He remembers what is out of sight.

Choices come to mind and a plan results.

Landscape architects essentially try to humanize spaces with green plant material.

And they're, they’re, they’re creating places that are pleasant to be in to move through, to look at.

Does it offer order and convenience?

Is it a delight to the senses?

These are common measures for a successful garden.

The Kukui Plaza in downtown Honolulu is distinguished by its rooftop garden.

By offering a planned landscape in an area where high land values have put a premium on open space, this private rooftop garden gives its residents ample recreational amenities.

It was designed by landscape architect Donald Wolbrink.

This garden cost about $1-million and taking into account the construction cost and the the additional structural requirements to support it.

That means that we have provided a completely developed park in the center of the city for $10 a square foot.

Now where could you go to get, buy the land and develop the park in the central urban area for, well you, you couldn't even approach it for 10 or 20 or 30 times that.

Mr. Wolbrink's work extends from the Bahamas, to Pakistan, Okinawa, Micronesia and Australia.

The open space concept, the garden concept, is vital in any urban area.

Most anything can be done if the community really wants it.

We have here in Hawaiʻi, as I recall, in the ASL - The American Society of Landscape Architects chapter - I think 66 members.

And the very fact that there are that many landscape architects in Honolulu, who are working, is a good measure of the impact that landscape architecture is having in Hawaiʻi.

A very distinguished leader is, is Richard Tongg.

He was born the same year the American Society of Landscape Architects was founded at 1899.

And if Richard, we urge him to stick around so he will have lived in three centuries, he doesn't have very much farther to go, 1899 to 2001.

(Instrumental music) One of the first sites to greet a new visitor to Honolulu are the airport gardens of Richard Tongg.

He purposely designed a Japanese, a Chinese and a Hawaiian garden with the traveler in mind.

One of the things that I wanted in this garden here was something that caused the visitor to want to go beyond Honolulu.

If he saw a good garden and became interested, he might be interested to go back to China and Japan.

Richard Tongg is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in Hawaiʻi.

Plants is always beautiful to me.

And I wanted to compose them so that they become a part of a picture, living picture.

Originally the Chinese were the first ones to, to plan with nature in view as they all feel that nature is above man.

(Instrumental music) When he began work on his gardens at the Honolulu airport, the airport architect wasn't sure what Mr. Tongg was about to do.

I asked him I said, "Would you mind giving me a chance to express myself?

If I do it wrong, then you can throw it away.

But you can at least give me a break.” And he did and that's the result of this.

But when they, when the thing was finished, why he was very proud of it too.

I'm delighted, always delighted to walk in the gardens.

I think gardens is an extremely important element in human existence.

And people without them, I think are in a very sad state of affairs.

As a practicing landscape architect for 24 years, author and publisher John Dominis Holt recalls the first stirrings of his interest in plant life.

Well I came back from New York, and discovered, you know, plants in Hawaiʻi.

And I was simply overwhelmed by the beauty of - I worked in our garden at Waimalu with my mother.

And she knew a lot about plants.

She grew up in Wailuku in a big garden.

And she was wonderful to work with because she knew so much about plants, and I suppose it was infectious, her enthusiasm, it certainly rubbed off on me.

And I was hooked after that summer.

I could never go back to anthropology and to slaving away with Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, and various other types at Columbia University.

And suddenly I was just - my whole life changed.

I was going to spend the rest of my life being close to plants and working with them.

(Birds chriping) Things that grow in the tropics love to grow in Hawaiʻi, particularly.

Yet Mr. Holt is alert to the contrast that is revealed by the plants imported into Hawaiʻi.

They're different from Hawaiian plants and then the smells and the flowers and the striated leaves.

They look like snakes, and lizards, like reptilia.

And there's nothing of that kind in the native flora of Hawaiʻi.

It's all very benign, like everything else here.

Benign to the point of being, you know, imminently extinct.

I mean, this, the soft, sweet-smelling plants of Hawaiʻi, can't compete with the heavy odorous, striated, strong, cannibalistic plants that come from other places.

But in my opinion, they're, they’re very handsome additions to a tropical garden and very beautiful.

One of the big problems that we have in a tropical area like Hawaiʻi is that the plants have never had it so good.

You know, you can bring a plant in from somewhere in the world like Africa or, or where you know the conditions are not really prime and you bring it in to Hawaiʻi and you read in the book that the plant is supposed to be only about 10 or 12 feet high.

Well, you plant it in Hawaiʻi and up it shoots, you know, and becomes about 40, 50 feet in height.

Dr. Yoneo Sagawa is the director of the Lyon Arboretum in Mānoa Valley.

Located in the distant origins of Mānoa Valley against the Koʻolau mountain range, the Lyon Arboretum is a botanical garden with a climate similar to the rainforests of Borneo and Southeast Asia.

Administered by the University of Hawaiʻi, the Lyon Arboretum is gifted with deep well drained soil and extensive rainfall.

Well, I think that it's a natural greenhouse.

The Lyon Arboretum, because we are in a tropical area, has been called upon by the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Center to provide samples of tropical plants for natural products, which would combat leukemia.

You can never tell where a new natural product might come from.

Of course, I would suspect that once they have been able to completely identify the compound, it might be made synthetically, but you have to depend on nature to produce a unique compound.

Probably these plants have secrets, which we at the present time had never been able to uncover.

With easy grace and idyllic serenity, one realizes with exhilarating impact, that the shape of a garden has evoked a response in us.

We've entered into an experience.

This response cannot always be planned, but the landscape architect is tireless in his attempt to do so.

I had less than a year from the time that made the first telephone call came to opening day.

Tamarind Park was designed by landscape architect James Hubbard.

It was being finished as the building was being finished and trees came in fully grown and the lawn came in - was planted very thickly - and it was almost an immediate landscaping effect.

I enjoyed it.

I didn't have to wait a week or six months to pass before something was reviewed.

The park is placed at a historic corner, named in honor of Charles Reed Bishop, husband of Princess Bernice, the last of the Kamehamehas.

The Bishop Square development contains more than 80,000 square feet of travertine marble imported from the quarries of Musetti Raffo in Verona, Italy.

People tell me that one of my high qualities is design.

My designs tend to be highly structured.

There’s, there’s a lot of architecture in them.

The sculpture by Englishmen, Henry Moore is titled Upright Motive.

Landscape Architecture is not just plant life, it's, it’ also the planning of land elevations in terms of land contours, if that needs to be changed or modified in any way.

Hopefully it's done with sensitivity to the contours of the, of the land that are there to begin with, the natural contours.

The Mauna Lani Golf Course has won awards for its sculptural treatment of lava, landforms and water.

Placing it at the level of landscape art.

Well, we basically approach the design of a golf course as one might approach the design of a very large park.

I found it an opportunity, I think to express landforms on a very large scale, which is something I've always been interested in.

A leader in the field of resort planning, Ray Cain is noted for his sensitive treatment of planting design.

He is also an acknowledged authority on landscaping with lava, as evidenced by his work at the Mauna Lani Hotel and golf course on the Big Island.

From the very beginning, we knew we were going to have to do something special at Mauna Lani, because we were going up against some pretty heavy-duty developments around us that had some very interesting places like Mauna Kea, Waikōloa, and some of the surrounding areas.

So, we knew we had to do something special.

And so, I think one of the things that we tried to capitalize on was the vastness of the site.

And to, to allow, again, the lava to be the predominant theme and to work with this juxtaposition of the solid black and the green lawn and the blue sky as well as the blue ocean.

So accented by these little white spots of the sand trap.

So, we were looking at the total thing as sort of a color composition of form and texture and land mounding.

So, a very expensive golf course, it's the most expensive one I can think of, but certainly the physical conditions upon which the golf course was, was constructed is probably as difficult as anything I've ever seen.

I must say it was quite mind boggling to go out there and look at just these miles and miles of just barren rock.

And just to walk around on the site was a major effort.

I mean, you could ruin your shoes, just within 10 feet, if you had, your shoes can be just cut to ribbons by the sharp lava.

So, it was probably one of the most difficult jobs we've ever had.

The biggest problem that you have in working in the lava is that it's so easily destroyed.

So, there's so many examples of where you've got to find what you want and how to display it and then try not to destroy it in the process of utilizing it as a as a land form.

If there's a particularly unique lava formation, we might actually lift it up and store it somewhere and bring it back later on or or take certain chunks of lava that have a natural character to them and to put them somewhere and then bring them back later on.

The primary theme of this island is the lava and people find it interesting and so we should try and retain it.

The surprise to me is how well everything grows in this lava.

I find it really almost frightening when you see some of these trees growing out of just what appears to be a solid massive rock.

And I'm, it's been one of the joys for me working with Mother Nature is there's always a surprise because you're never quite sure what you're going to end up with.

(Instrumental music) The world is a very beautiful place.

Even, even in the middle of an arid desert there's, there's great beauty in nature.

The residential garden is here exemplified by Marion Mapes' Memorial Garden at Lyon Arboretum.

It was designed by landscape architect Stephen House, seen here conferring with artist Duane Preble.

The garden is a study in harmonious relationships, where beauty and usefulness are the end result of all design.

Mister House's design for the garden was influenced by Japanese traditions.

The Japanese written character for home --- combines the words for house and garden.

To the Japanese, a house does not become a home until it includes a garden.

Traditional Japanese custom relies on a fence to separate the garden sanctuary from the outside world.

(Instrumental music) Stepping stones evoke a passage, often with a hint of mystery.

Textural variety is enhanced by the studied placement of steps, rock and bridge.

The formality of the hexagonal paving pattern gently yields to a more natural arrangement of stones.

The Mapes garden links together the symbol of water from the falls, to the basin and along a rock bed that flows with water during a Mānoa rain.

In Hawaiian, the word wai refers to any liquid other than the ocean and that includes freshwater and human blood.

It also is a word that means wealth in Hawaiian.

Kai is the sea, ocean waters, kai.

Wai, of course, is freshwater.

And I think that the meanings of this word has and its metaphoric extensions is, tells us that they had a hell of a lot of respect for water.

Waiola, the water of life.

See?

And it was, every valley, it seems, has its wailoa - its place where, where water is sanctified, almost sanctified.

Where, where a little pool of water or a freshet of water has, has a very basic kind of importance to that area.

And the name the naming of a place Waiola is then further extending the idea of venerating water, respecting it.

Respect the land for what it is and what the future generations will need.

And that is landscape architecture.

When we're talking about the landscape architect, we're really talking about the art form that is working most closely with nature and working with plants as they grow in, in their natural ways.

The landscape architect is part farmer, part scientist, part architect, part artist.

Really the landscape architect is a painter working with plant material rather than paint.

(Instrumental music) Spengler identifies the landscape as the base for the culture.

He writes that man is so held to it by myriad fibers that without it, life, soul and thought are inconceivable.

(Instrumental music)