DANA ANNE YEE, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT, LLC.

A perfect day to spend at our special Foster Botanical Garden. Everyone in class made beautiful succulent pumpkins. Our dear teacher, Larsa was not feeling well so we were treated by having Noel D. Chilton teach us how to make these beautiful pumpkin gardens. Assistant Dyann helped collect the succulents and made a beautiful frragrant Puakenikeni Lei for my mom. Creating these live pumpkin gardens is a great start to our holiday season. A truly enjoyable class with a ver

By: Dana Anne Yee, FASLA Photos By and Provided By: Dana Anne Yee, FASLA A fabulous LICH 2026 Conference Site Tour took place on October 16, 2026. Our leader, planner, and van driver was our very own Landscape Architect, Bradley Tanimura. With the planning assistance of ASLA Hawai`i Chapter Members ,Vivian Arita, Matt Higa, Alex Tamai, the LICH conference team, coordinator Karen Smith, and LICH President, Matt Lyum. Fourteen people from O`ahu including six people from Kaua`

By: Dana Anne Yee, FASLA Photos by and provided by: Dana Anne Yee, FASLA A wonderful evening took place at the charming vintage inspired Chinatown restaurant, PEWA on October 14, 2026. ASLA Hawai`i Chapter past and new Board of Directors, ASLA Hawai`i Chapter members, ASLA students, family, friends, and generous sponsors all got together for this enjoyable evening. Matt, Delphine, Alex, Caasi, and our president, Dominic planned this fun filled event, with the support of our

ASLA Girls Night out was full of laughter, delicious food, and great friends. It was also Sarah's birthday and a celebration of her new baby, Benny. Hooray. We missed Kelsey and Nancy but will hopefully see them at the ASLA meeting and LICH conference and field trip. Our Girls Night tradition, as always, was a memorable experience.

Three Landscape Architects enjoyed a beautiful night visiting AIA offices at Downtown Honolulu at the AIA Firm Crawl event organized by Olina King, AIA events and operations coordinator and AIA. Tomoko Naka spearheaded our girl's night out with Kelsey Wai both from Bowers and Kubota and me Dana Anne Yee, FASLA. What an absolutely fun evening visiting five downtown AIA offices. Each office was filled with welcoming wonderful staff., food, and activities. We started at VCBO

A truly enjoyable class by the City and County of Honolulu at Foster Botanical Garden taught by sweet Lasar and assistant Diane. Lasar taught us how to press flowers. and our class arranged the pressed flowers in one-of-a-kind interesting designs which we framed in a matt board color of our choosing. We are now inspired to pick flowers and leaves and press them for future art masterpieces. Mahalo and Aloha to Lasar and Diane.

The ASLA Board of Trustees Meeting and Conference took place in September 2026. The surprise of the event was that the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards took place right across from our JW Marriott LA Live Hotel. It was thrilling to meet Emmy Award winners with our ASLA attendees. The headquarter JW Marriott Hotel was just around the block from the Grammy Museum and on the morning of the first BOT meeting day, I had the opportunity to see this fun and interactive museum. Kona rec

The ASLA Hawai`i Chapter monthly meeting took place on August 21, 2026 at Magic Island. Our productive meeting was organized by our acting president Dominic. We discussed ASLA Board matters and future events. ASLA Hawai`i Chapter sponsored the ASLA Hawai`i Chapter and Students Pau Hana. After a week of rainy windy weather from Hurricane Lala watching the sunset at Ala Moana Regional Park was simply beautiful.

Learning how to weave a traditional lauhala covered half of brick was a wonderful way to spend Saturday morning at Ho`omaluhia Botanical Garden. Susan, my mom, and have taken many of Richard's classes in the past and this class was equally rewarding. We all took home a special handmade lauhala covered brick that we weaved ourselves. Richard's helpfulness and kindness is why we continue to take classes from him at the base of the beautiful Koʻolau Mountains. Hoʻomaluhia Bo

The 2026 Annual Halawa Xeriscape Garden Unthirsty Plant Sale took place on a beautiful sunny Saturday, August 1, 2026. Ms. Sheri Mikami Community Relations Specialist II for the Board of Water Supply was the community leader of this annual BWS event. Malu Stanich, ASLA, Dana Anne Yee, FASLA, and William Perreira, represented ASLA Hawai`i Chapter at our community ASLA event. Alex Tamai, ASLA kindly visited with his wife and new baby. The ASLA Hawai`i Chapter was part of the ma

A wonderful class that sparked my creativity to learn a new art form, aquatint, took place at the Honolulu Printmakers, every day for one week. Artist and Wicked Bugs and Wicked Plants illustrator Briony Morrow-Cribbs guided us through copperplate etching and airbrush aquatint (with an automized mist of acrylic) to create tonal gradient intaglio prints. Briony (and her husband Abe) from a small town of 2,000 was the visiting professor from Dummerston, Vermont. The theme wa

A wonderful day was spent at the Honolulu Museum of Art on July 19, 2026, to celebrate Hawai`i's connection to the Ocean at HoMA's Community Sunday. A beautiful Sunday to enjoy walking around the Museum, exploring the galleries, and taking part in the many activities. We made beautiful Gyotaku fish prints of the invasive, Ta`ape (Lutjanus kasmira) Yellow Snapper Fish. We participated in creating clay sculptures to raise awareness with Coral Care Arts, we learned about preser

A summer workshop and testing to renew my TRAQ - Tree Risk Assessment Qualifications after 5 years took place in Hawai`i at the Lester McCoy Pavilion at Ala Moana Regional Park on July 8, 9, and 10, 2026. Kevin Eckert provided his teaching skills in this two-day educational course and a half day comprehensive written and performance-based field day assessment test. As an International Society of Arboriculture Certified Arborist since 1995 and TRAQ Certified since 2022, qual

A mid-day walk in Waikīkī provided me the opportunity to walk by and check out my landscape project the Romer House Hotel in Waikīkī that opened two years ago. What a pleasant surprise to see the landscape on the street frontage, green and flourishing. The Kalo Lo`i in the middle of Waikīkī reminiscent of the day's past were green and growing, the Hotel sign was installed, and the native plants were proudly blooming. It is so nice that the landscape is doing so well. Smil

We continued our Annual Tradition to celebrate May Day at Kapi`olani Regional Park. This City and County of Honolulu event was the 98th Annual Lei Day Celebration that we always look forward to. We were taught how to make Coconut leaf stars and fish that we held at the end of the Coconut rib, waving like we caught a fish. We watched as the kind City volunteer ladies made us flower Haku lei wristlets. We walked around with the scarce (due to the many storms) Plumeria flower

Alberto Ricordi, the University of Hawai`i at Manoa Ornamentals & Landscape Assistant Extension Agent, invited us to this wonderfully enjoyable relaxing day at the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (CTAHR) at Waimanalo. Alberto gave a short class and question answer time before guiding us, past the taro field, to the collection field of many varieties of Plumeria Trees. After the storms there were not too many flowers for this busy time of year but the flo

Dried Lauhala from the Pandanus Tree were `Ulana (weaved) into this Moena (Lauhala mat) Kanapī (Centipedes) made from Lauhala “crawls all over your feet” Loggins and Messina Saturday afternoons in February and March of 2026 were spent at the Honolulu Museum of Art learning the Native Hawaiian practice of `Ulana (weaving). Jordan Paguirigan taught us the cultural significance of Hala (Pandanus) and its importance to Hawaiʻi. We learned how to clean, cut, and strip lau hala

What a nice way to spend Chinese New Year with my mom. We started the day at a wonderful Succulent and Rock Garden Class at Foster Botanical Garden. Lasar and Melody taught us how to arrange the rocks, planter mix, and succents to make our beautiful gardens. We then enjoyed a delicious meal at Utage, filling ourselves up with oxtail soup and a teri burger where we saw David and Tony. We added to our meal Kam Bakery glazed donuts and Young's Fish Market charsui. Yummy. We