Page 159 - WDT Magazine Egypt

Kauai’s Allerton Garden

Strolling Through Allerton is

Like Walking Through a
Landscape Painting

Story and Photography by Michael Burge

t sounds like the height of hubris, planting an exotic
garden on an island that is an exotic garden, but
Ithat is precisely what Robert Allerton and John
Gregg Allerton did on Kauai’s south shore in the mid
twentieth century. Today their horticultural bequest
serves as a centerpiece of the National Tropical Bo-
tanical Garden, and as a destination for visitors to the
Garden Isle.
My wife Kathie and I visited Allerton Garden and its
companion, McBryde Garden, in the spring of 2018
with friends who live on Kauai. We took a sunset tour
through Allerton, where we hiked through a series of
lush botanical spaces, called “rooms,” and ended at
the former home of Robert and John Allerton, where
we were served a traditional Hawaiian meal to the
rhythms of the surf pounding the sand just a lovers’
stroll away.
Allerton and McBryde Gardens have a storied past
that is deeply entwined in Hawaiian history. In the mid
nineteenth century the lush Lawa‘i Valley belonged to
the son of John Young, who was an influential adviser
to King Kamehameha I. The son, James Young Kane-
hoa, willed a third of the property in 1851 to his niece,
Queen Emma, a beloved figure in island history.

A Moreton Bay fig tree in Allerton
Garden shelters a dinosaur egg – fake,
we trust – in its gnarled roots. Allerton’s
exotic beauty has served as a setting
for many feature films and TV shows,
including “Jurassic Park.”
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