About Us:

We created Hi‘iaka's Healing Herb Garden in 2000 and have dedicated ourselves to finding and propagating rare Hawaiian plants ever since, a mission that continues today.

Barbara Fahs, the owner and creator of the Garden, was born in England shortly after World War II when her American parents were living there and her father was working as a foreign correspondent. She spent most of her growing-up years in the San Francisco Bay Area, but has never forgiven her parents for leaving England when she was too young to have developed a British accent.

She attended the University of California at Santa Barbara and earned a degree in Anthropology, with a special interest in the peoples and cultures of Oceania and their magical and religious practices. Later, she also earned a secondary teaching credential and a Master's Degree in Education from San Jose State University.

Barbara worked as an instructional designer and a technical writer in the high technology industry in San Jose, California, from 1984 through 1998, and now lives on the Big Island of Hawaii, where she has created an educational herb garden out of a 500 year-old lava flow. The Garden features over 80 species of native Hawaiian plants that were used in the la`au lapa`au tradition of herbal medicine. She is seeking Members to join her in her mission of conserving and educating about these rare and special plants.

She completed the course work required to become a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in 1994 and has been studying, growing, and using culinary and healing herbs since 1971.