Exterior Decorating Practised By Women of Hawaii

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14636, 3 April 1948, Page 5

Exterior Decorating Practised By Women of Hawaii

Outdoor Circle Keeps The Islands Beautiful “Billboards Are Not Countenanced” Hawaii does not have billboards. It does not have them because a group of women determined that no longer should visitors to the Islands have to peer around a huge sign to see beautiful vistas, writes Mrs K. W. Lauder in the Christian Science Monitor. Many streets are uniformly lined with flowering trees of one colour. This, too, is so because these women helped to nlant them, and in many cases provided the .plants from their own nurseries.

Copper, rose, and purple bougainvillaea, morning glory or yellow alamanda vines trail down mountain sides because individual women took their yard boys to water and care for the young plants.

The women who do this labour of love are known as the Outdoor Circle . It is an organisation over 50 years old, composed of women in all walks of life, working side by side to keep Hawaii beautiful It is open to anyone. This club helns schools plan them landscaping, and has encouraged the children’s love for gardening by offering prizes to the school with the most attractive garden. Almost ah schoolyards are a colourful array of cannas in their countless shades, petunias, zinnias, or other flowers which strike the children’s fancy. Whenever the city fathers or traffic engineers announce the cutting down of trees to widen roads, the women get busy. Unless actual safety is concerned—and often it is not—they put up such a fight that usually the men retire in resignation. and some other method for the road work is evolved.

Help With Landscaping If a householder is having difficulty because a tree is breaking up his pavement, the chairman of the Landscape and Planting Committee has someone there in a matter of hours to devise a remedy for the situation and also save the tree. When an individual, a school, community. district, or institution wants suggestions for landscaping, this same indefatigable club helns again. For many years, as a house was built, a club representative approached the householder, asking whether he would be amenable to planting, or letting the club plant, the tree which would match or harmonise with the ethers on that street.

As a result, there are streets, miles long, which blaze with various coloured flowering trees. Last year this organisation gave an elaborate flower festival, Ulu Melia (growing of the plumeria in Hawaiian), which t featured this many-coloured, deeply fragrant flower in leis, kahilis (feather standards of Hawaiian royalty) and exquisite flower arrangements by the many local women highly talented in this art. Thev also sold some of the plumeria cuttings donated, and used several thousand to plant two districts in this flowering tree.

With approximately 5,000 dollars thus raised, the Circle has already given plants to the city library and to 25 schools. This type of work continues evei'y month. Since the war. the Circle has found its work difficult and somewhat repetitious. Many new merchants have invaded the Islands who now must be taught that no large signs of any kind are 'allowed on business houses, that no billboards are countenanced, nor any gaudy displays. Many years ago the Outdoor Circle succeeded in stopping outdoor advertising. They ■ started interviewing merchants who advertised on billboards, asking them to co-

operate in an effort to make Hawaii outstanding by ceasing to advertise in this way. A few acquiesced at once; many more indignantly refused. FI miniating Billboards Individual women, careful to avoid a definite boycott, tactfully but regretfully implied that they would not be trading at stores continuing to advertise on billboards. Months of hammering at merchants brought results. Many discontinued this form of advertising. The women meanwhile tried to get a law through the Legislature forbidding the use of billboards, but they soon saw that was a time-con-suming and probably futile effort, so they pushed on by themselves. They wrote to every national concern advertising in Hawaii, giving their laudable reasons for wanting billboards eliminated. Some gladly and graciously consented to stop. Some time ago the Outdoor Circle received a copy of a resolution or “gentlemen’s agreement” signed by executives cf most business firms in the Islands, promising to keep their signs small and in every way help the club in its laudable efforts to keep Hawaii beautiful and unmarred by blatant commercialism. When the advertising had dwindled to two or three different items the groun approached the local man who owned the advertising business responsible for the ads. He had been careful in his placement of the boards, but they were unsightly wherever they stood. By popular subscription the women raised the money with which to buy the business from the owner. This finally eliminated all billboards because the club refused to renew co nf racts as they matured. Thus a group of communityminded women has proved what steady, tempered zeal can accomplish.' These women tirelessly continue day after day their island housekeeping and exterior decorating.