An Expert in Her Field

At Anna Palomino's Ho‘olawa Farm, spiritual rediscovery is rooted in practical knowledge.

 

Michael Stein

 

Story by Michael Stein  |  Photography by Jason Moore
    
Pili grass may not have the fragrance of plumeria, or the dazzling colors of heliconia or kahili ginger. But when you come closer, you can see that the grass has its own slender, translucent, subtle beauty. Unlike plumeria, it’s an indigenous Maui plant, one that the original Hawaiians used for thatched roofs. Today, as Maui’s need for water grows at an unprecedented rate, pili’s drought-resistant qualities make it an ideal landscape ground cover that requires almost no maintenance and irrigation.
    
Anna Palomino, founder of Ho‘olawa Farms, and her handful of employees busily pack 15,000 pili plants they have propagated for a project in Makena, setting them into boxes laid out beneath a row of shade canopies. The shipment is just one example of how the farm, one of the island’s oldest native-plant nurseries, works to preserve and find modern uses for the oldest plants on Maui, the ones that most truly belong here, and, ironically, the rarest and most endangered.