ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses how ethnicity and/or cultural background is reflected in front-yard gardens in Honolulu. It deals with three garden styles: American (European), Japanese and Chinese. In these cultures, the term "garden" does not share exactly the same meaning. In English, the term may mean a kitchen garden, an ornamental garden or an out-door living space. American-style residential gardens tend to serve all of these purposes. Gardens are part of "cultural landscape" which reflects people's tastes, values, aspirations, and even fears, in tangible, visible form. The concept of "proto-paysage," or original landscape, proposes that humans have some universal common denominator, regardless of ethnicity or cultural background, in regard to landscape. The chapter discusses that some Japanese garden traditions can be conspicuously found in the front yards of ethnically Japanese people in Hawai'i. Species with statistically significant occurrence in the front yards of ethnically Japanese were sacred bamboo, cycad and oriental hawthorn.