Carol’s Garden AKA Lavaloha’s Sunken Garden
This series shows how a collapsed lava tube was turned into The Sunken Garden, now called Carol’s Garden
Aerial View in 2002
The sunken garden is a section of collapse lava tube. Dirt had been pushed to the edges of the collapsed lava tube, Sugar cane was at the bottom.
Getting Started
The sugar cane was cut down, exposing a stream. It took a lot of digging to expose the top of the lava tube that was carrying the water.
First Pass Shaping
To make it accessible we needed to make a path into it, and dig out the stream. Notice the hapu’u around the end of the garden. They all were brought up from the yard of a house in Hilo.
Improvements
More plantings and a real bridge over the stream. We could see it taking shape.
Total Rehab in 2017
Lack of attention allowed the sunken garden to become overgrown. The rebuild project started.
Start of Reclamation
The hapuu were placed early on, but the garden was let languish for a long time and had gotten thoroughly overgrown. Time to bring in the big guns!
Make it Wider
Widening it made the paths easier, and we replaced the bridge with a culvert.
2018 Starts with Upgrading the Culvert
The old culvert couldn’t handle the flow from heavy rains so it was replaced by a bigger one.
A Bigger Culvert is Cemented in.
This also helped hold the path across the stream. We had the shape we wanted, now to add the plantings!
March 2022
Three years and a lot of work later, it’s truly beautiful and even has three ducks! Can you find them? Notice the fence around it. Thank you Chris for that safety improvement.