The arrival experience part 1: Jungle driveway

Today's focus will be on the arrival experience designed by Robert Welsch, landscape designer and something else…oh, my husband! I am featuring the garden for the next couple of blogs because permitting is taking as long as everyone out here in Hawaii says it will take-longer than you expect! (But there is progress, trenches for electric and plumbing are dug, and work will start on them Monday).

To get to our land, you drive down a long gravel road through a forest of uluhe ferns and ohi'a trees. Once you arrive at our gate, Robert planted monkey pod trees five years ago (3 feet tall, look at them now!) to create a natural tunnel. Filled with dappled light, the drive down the driveway draws you into the embrace of the naturalistic elegance that Robert has created. Your eyes are drawn left and right as you pass palms, bamboo, elephant ears, twenty foot tall gingers, calatheas, orchids and many other plants.

Once you reach the end of the drive, the driveway opens up on a vista of the 400 palm trees in the distance. More on the rest of the garden later, for now, one bunch of pictures is worth a thousand words! The first picture is from 2007 for perspective. No monkey pods and no magic from Robert yet. When we started, there wasn't even a driveway, there was only jungle.