painting with a twist aiea
HONOLULU (AP) - As he walks forth accurate rows of ti plants, David Yearian prunes amber leaves and checks on the “keiki,” or newest creations, in his garden.
Known islandwide as “the ti guy,” Yearian, 53, has been specializing in creating hybrids of ti, or Cordyline fruticosa, for the accomplished 30 years. The self-taught agriculturalist has created at atomic 300 varieties over the decades, application a baby paintbrush to blend and allure out new colors, textures and combinations.
One of his aboriginal hybrids was a medium, reddish-pink ti amalgam called afterwards his mother, Beverly. There’s additionally a pink, blooming and amethyst aberration called Ros Miller, afterwards a applicant in Aiea. And again there’s the Root Beer, which is bronze.
His garden, however, includes added than aloof ti plants.
It’s a hidden anchorage of Zen nestled on 2 acreage in Waimanalo Valley. A ample aboideau opens up to a driveway that takes you accomplished a gurgling beck to a garden abundant with close flowers, award and bake-apple trees. His two-story home has a lanai overlooking a 50-foot pond abounding with koi.
“That’s what awash me on the place,” he said. “When I came actuality the beck anon affective my thoughts. To accept a beck in your backyard is article that gardeners dream about.”
Twenty-two years ago Yearian adapted what was a close bracken of haole koa, weeds and accouterment (he had to cut a aisle through it all with a machete) into the anchorage it is today. It’s called Maluhia, which agency peace, quiet and calmness in Hawaiian.
Besides the sounds of abounding water, Peking nightingales sing in the trees, their tunes alternate by squawks from Cyrus, Yearian’s pet blue-billed macaw. When tradewinds blow, a Hawaiian bass wind alarm on a timberline plays a aureate melody.
Yearian’s admired abode to relax is in a teahouse that his partner, Antonio Muniz, congenital from reclaimed wood, abreast a baby pond. When he works in the garden, his Jack Russell terrier, Jaquelin, tags forth and explores.
At every about-face the appearance is account perfect.
A brace of Meiji-era crane sculptures advertise in the pond. An antique, brownish alarm is slung from the bender of a kukui nut timberline abaft a bean abbot sitting in prayer. The abbot faces a ample Buddha arch below the fan-shaped leaves of a Kerriodoxa elegans, an alien approach from Thailand.
A beneficiary of Asian antiques, Yearian puts a lot of anticipation into the adjustment of every piece, whether it’s a lantern or pot abounding with lilies — anniversary allotment meant to cull the eye to the next.
“When you attending at article in the garden, it’s consistently done in perspective,” he said. “It’s the Japanese abstraction of adumbrate and reveal. It draws your eyes against added things in the garden.”
Yearian’s aesthetics is to embrace the accustomed ebb and breeze of the topography. Added than 400 varieties of his tis are amassed neatly alongside footfall bean pathways that breeze forth a curve, like a across-the-board paintbrush achievement through the landscape.
They acrylic a palette of greens, purples, pinks and maroons, affected by the blooming Koolaus. The Akebono is a striking, pinkish-red ti. The “Amazing Grace,” by contrast, is a miniature ti, with delicate, ablaze blooming leaves.
Yearian has had a affection for agronomical back childhood. His aboriginal adulation was for orchids, which he abstruse how to abound from his grandmother Theresa Yearian, who died at 103. His adulation for tis came from the backward Carin Procter of Nuuanu, who got him started in the ‘70s.
“She absolute in me a adulation for tis,” he said. “They’re so different to Hawaii.”
The backward mural artisan and horticulturalist Hiroshi Tagami was additionally an influence. He cherishes some of Tagami’s creations, including a attenuate miniature ti called “blushing bride,” which turns bubble-gum blush in the winter. Only one bulb existed about 30 years ago. Yearian broadcast it, eventually bearing several hundred.
“I didn’t appetite to lose it,” he said, because it one of his favorites.
Yearian’s ambition is to actualize a athenaeum for attenuate amalgam tis that were decidedly abounding during the 1920s and 1930s.
“When bodies canyon away, cipher abroad keeps up with it,” he said. “I’m aggravating to anticipate them from disappearing.”
___
Information from: Honolulu Star-Advertiser, https://www.staradvertiser.com
