Blooming On Kauai

Good habits start at home. No Ka Oi is a home of hard-working employees who are dedicated to their work and to our company, and they carry the good habits we establish into the field when they maintain and install landscapes on Kauai’s commercial properties. We’re talking about safety.

Safety is a key concern in the landscaping industry. We operate a whole range of equipment all day, every day. We load and unload trucks, we scale 100-foot palm trees, and we run power tools to prune, edge, trim and beautify your property. All of this comes with a responsibility—and some risk.

That’s why we focus intently on ingraining our safety culture into our people. We don’t just talk about “safety first”; we live and breathe it. Our company has been recognized nationally by the Professional Landcare Network (PLANET) for maintaining a scratch-free fleet and employee incident rate for four years in a row.

Landscaping acts as an attractive traffic guide, easing you through a commercial property’s entrance, encouraging you to walk this way or that, drawing your eye to points of interest, and discouraging you from driving or stepping into safety hazards.

Most of us never think about the important work landscaping does on a Kauai commercial property. Well-designed landscaping serves a purpose beyond adding aesthetic value — we’re talking about form and function.   

Specific landscape elements and principles are built into the plan to improve traffic flow and the guest experience.

Curb appeal takes a lot of credit in the landscape—and there’s a lot to be said about creating “wow factor” to woo visitors and customers to your Kauai commercial property. After all, the reason people travel to Hawaii’s Garden Isle is to be surrounded by beauty: mountains, the ocean, tropical rainforest, pristine golf courses, luxury resorts, characteristic Kauai landscapes that are postcard perfect.

So, is your commercial property giving visitors, residents and others who work, live or play there something beautiful to experience?

At No Ka Oi, we believe that even a few simple enhancements to the landscape can make a significant statement on your Kauai commercial property. You don’t have to spend a lot to make a big impact. But you do have to turn your attention toward details, safety and maintenance.

When, why and how often should you prune your Kauai trees and shrubs?

This question isn’t so easy to answer in Hawaii, where plants are growing all the time. Sure, landscapes slow down slightly in winter months when the temperatures are a bit cooler, but the growing season never really comes to a full stop.

So how do you deal with pruning when plants never take a break from growing?

Unfortunately, when it comes to pruning, we often see commercial properties on the island where a landscape contractor goes in for “routine pruning” and severely cuts back trees and shrubs. This is potentially harmful for the plants, and disappointing for clients—especially when trees that flower annually are pruned before they bloom. (Boo!) Excessive pruning basically can shock a plant into survival mode, causing it stress and affecting its growth potential.

The storied Tree Tunnel in Kauai serves as a grand gateway to Poipu Beach—a popular tourist destination where No Ka Oi first got started in business. The mile-long stretch is lined with some 500 Eucalyptus trees, growing more than 100 feet tall, that form a lush, green canopy over the roadway. If you turn off Highway 50 on to Maliuhi Road, you’ll enter the Tree Tunnel and eventually reach the historic Koloa Town.

The Tree Tunnel’s Eucalyptus trees are an attraction for locals and visitors. They’re graceful and resilient, having survived two hurricanes.

There are several renditions of the trees’ origin, but we know they are about a century old. The original trees were planted in 1911 as a gift to Kauai from Walter Duncan McBryde, co-founder of McBryde Sugar Company and manager of Kauai Pineapple. (He was known as the Pineapple Baron.) The trees were leftovers from his estate home, which is now Kukuiolono Park & Golf Course.

Never stop learning. Never let up on quality. Never lose sight of why we do this. Why are we passionate about the green industry and creating beautiful spaces for commercial clients on our Garden Isle?

The reason is simple, really. We love the work and the people.

We gain a great deal of personal and professional satisfaction from watching our landscaping expertise “rub off” by creating green, lush, healthy properties on Kauai.

Our work makes people’s vacations to Kauai memorable: They might recall walking through a garden on a resort property and enjoying the flowers. We also know that our work brings significant business value to our commercial clients, improving their ability to attract and retain tenants, drive spending from retail customers and compete in the market.

Timing is everything, and we’re talking about when to apply fertilizer to keep Kauai properties green and growing strong year round. Turf nutrition is a critical, and often sidelined, aspect of a successful lawn care program. The reality is, property managers and homeowners alike may be tempted to reduce the cost of their services by cutting out regular “feeding” of their lawns, opting to reduce fertilization or eliminate it altogether. This is a big mistake. (And we see this happen all the time.)

Our clients are often surprised at how green their lawns and flowering shrubs look once they commit to our program. They often ask us, “What’s the secret?” We wish we had a fancy “trick” or novel response to that question, but the reality is, by customizing a lawn care program that includes consistent, properly managed applications of fertilizer, we give clients the results they desire.

Here are some guidelines we follow at No Ka Oi when determining when, and how, to fertilize the Kauai properties we service.