Core Elements of the Akua Aina Model
1. Council as Core Practice
Regular Council gatherings foster deep listening, authentic communication, and collective insight. This practice serves as the social soil in which collaboration and trust can grow.
2. Integrated Living and Learning
Residents and visiting teachers co-create an educational ecosystem where learning is hands-on and tied to the rhythms of the land. Knowledge flows organically through experience and mentorship.
3. Residency for Aligned Stewards
Residency opportunities support those who live simply, steward the land, and engage in community life. These immersive experiences deepen personal growth and build a shared foundation of skills and values.
4. Hosting Wisdom-Keepers and Cultural Practitioners
Akua Aina welcomes farmers, herbalists, artists, and cultural elders to share their knowledge.
5. Climate-Aware, Off-Grid Living
Being completely off-grid, we designed for sufficiency within ecological boundaries. Drought and climate change challenge us to live in harmony with natural cycles, and model regenerative hospitality.
6. Intergenerational and Intercultural Healing
Our work bridges generations and cultures. We honor ancestors, uplift the youth, and create inclusive spaces for healing and reconnection to Earth and Spirit.
Opportunities for Engagement
Residencies for aligned individuals and small families
Work-trade opportunities in tiny homes around the land
Cultural workshops and skill-sharing events
A future teaching guide and curriculum to support replication in other communities
Akua Aina is both a beacon and a bridge. Whether you're called to learn, to teach, or to replicate aspects of this model in your own ecosystem, we invite you into dialogue, exchange, and co-creation.
Spiral Labyrinth
This spiral labyrinth garden was designed to replace a banana patch that wasn’t producing worthwhile banana’s. It is now a labyrinth planted in sweet corn, sunflowers, yacon, white pineapple, sweet peas, calendula, and purple basil!
Yacon
Yacon means "water root" in the Inca language. Its flavor is a little strange for what you might expect from an underground tuber – it's like a sweet cross between early apples, watermelon and very mild celery, with a touch of pear. Mildly flavored raw when first dug, it's the texture as much as the taste is what sets yacon apart.
Kalo (Taro)
Kalo is a staple food in Hawaii and is known as the plant that gives us poi, kulolo, and laulau. Kalo is of the most important cultivated crops in Hawaii.
Jackfruit (Artocarpus Heterophyllus)
Native to tropical Asia, the greenish unripe fruit is often cooked as a vegetable, and is considered a staple food crop, is versatile and a delicious meat substitute!
Rolinia (Rolinnia Deliciosa)
Is a species of flowering plant in the custard-apple family that is native to tropical South America. It is cultivated for its edible fruits, commonly known as biriba’, lemon meringue pie fruit, or wild sugar-apple, throughout the world's tropics and subtropics.
Ulu / Breadfruit (Artocarpus Altilis)
Citrus trees, soursop, cherimoya, apples, peaches, plums, coffee, various cherries, star fruit, mango, specialty guava, dragon fruit, white pineapple, star apple, moringa, curry leaf, cinnamon, cloves, jacaranda, Madre de cacao, and many others.
‘Akua ‘Aina has approximately 150 trees of various varieties all with beautiful fruits, flowers, and leaves of many colors which can be seen everywhere you look. It’s exciting to discover new uses for the various medicinal plants such as comfrey, turmeric, ginger, calendula, lavender, aloe, and moringa. We are inspired to continually learning and plant more as time goes on. We are continually adding native trees such as Koa, Sandalwood, Ohia Leha, Hapu’u, A’ali’i and Ho’awa to enrich the environment and help to preserve the botanical treasures of Hawaii!
Ho’awa is a native Hawaiian plant species that provides a beautiful fragrant flower.
We continue to plant various other native plants, orchids, vegetables, herbs (culinary and medicinal), and as a diverse variety of ornamental plants, flowers, and ferns which we incorporate into products, flower arranging, and occasional basket weaving.
Salves
We combine a variety of ORGANIC medicinal herbs in our salves such as calendula, lavender, cloves, comfrey, plantain, melaleuca, and aloe vera to create extraordinary products for the body. All are infused for about 8 weeks in grape seed, coconut, olive, and / or avocado oil then blend with PURE bees wax & shea butter.
Calendula
We have built a diffuser for making essential oils and hydrosols and are currently incorporating a variety of our organically grown medicinal plants into a variety of healing tinctures, salves, creams, vinegars, wines, chutney’s and jams.
Raised beds
We include a variety of farming techniques. We plant our delicate leafy vegetables in raised garden beds to protect them from the chickens and ducks who naturally want to eat them or dig them out of the ground as well as slugs and other pests. Between the ground cloth and raised beds we can more easily manage and protect the precious leafy greens.
Compost
This is a layered “compost cake” which was started by alternating layers of carbon and nitrogen fixing plants such as Madre de Cacao and Moringa, bokashi, biochar, dried leaves, duck straw, manure, composted soil, garden scraps, more dried leaves, wild basil, comfrey, and banana leaves.