Kahanu Garden


Kahanu Garden and Preserve is a botanical garden located on the Hana Highway near Hana, Maui, Hawaii. It is one of five gardens of the non-profit National Tropical Botanical Garden, the others being McBryde, Allerton, and Limahuli Garden and Preserve on Kauai, and The Kampong in Florida.
The garden was established in 1972 on Maui's northern coast, with rugged black lava seascapes, and is surrounded by one of Hawaii's last undisturbed hala forests.
The garden's ethnobotanical collections focus on plants traditionally used by Pacific Island people. It includes the world's largest breadfruit collection, first established in the 1970s. Today the garden contains accessions of approximately 150 varieties of breadfruit collected from field expeditions to over 17 Pacific island groups in Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, as well as Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Seychelles. This collection is used for research and conservation by NTBG's Breadfruit Institute.
Other garden holdings include bamboo, banana, calabash, coconut, kava, kamani, loulu, sugarcane, taro, turmeric, vanilla, and bitter yam.
Kahanu Garden is open to visitors. An admission fee is charged.

Piilanihale Heiau

Kahanu Garden also contains the Piilanihale Heiau, a National Historic Landmark believed to be the largest ancient temple in the Hawaiian Islands. It is built from basalt blocks and extends by, with a high front wall rising. The large central terrace with two separate platforms is situated on a broad ridge that adds to its majesty. The side facing the sea rises steeply in five stepped terraces, and the upper rectangular surface of the main platform contains several smaller walled enclosures and pits, all bounded on the rear by a well-built stone wall up to high.
Construction of the main terrace dates back to the 14th century. Wings were later added and rededicated during the 16th century, possibly after high chief Piʻilani from western Maui conquered the beautiful, fertile, well-watered, and heavily populated Hāna region, thereby unifying the whole island.