Review: In an Old Hawaiian Garden: An Album of Hawaii's Flowers

In an Old Hawaiian Garden: An Album of Hawaii's Flowers by Don Blanding
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a very short book, can easily be read in under an hour. Although if you’re one to peer for a long time at a drawing of a flower and contemplate the accompanying poem it may take longer.

There are under twenty of these flowers that can be found in Hawaii. The poems are six or eight lines which praise the flower on the opposing page. The poems are okay, nothing that seems remarkable. The images are done fairly realistically but have a sort of soft focus as well.

My copy, which came to me through generations of my family (my great-grandmother knew the author) also includes an insert about where you can buy the images for framing so as not to cut up the book itself. It also advertises other paper products with these images, like stationary or cards. I'm sure those are no longer available now since this was published in the 1940s.

The description in goodreads about this book is incorrect, as there are more than 8 flowers in the book, although maybe only that many are native to Hawaii and the others are not native. I’m not sure about the horticulture history.


View all my reviews