Mari’s Urban Garden — Local services in Honolulu

When I think “urban,” I think Kakaako. Small-ish condos in tall buildings with lots of light and windows making it challenging to decorate due to lack of wall space. So what do you do? You become a plant parent. If you’re like me and believe your home is where plants go to die, Mari’s Urban Garden is where you need to go to redeem yourself. The staff are so helpful and compassionate towards us plant murderers. They will help you to understand which plants are easy, which window to put them in, how to water them, which ones won’t kill your dog, and they have all kinds of pots, watering tools, fertilizer, even little ring lights to give your plant babies extra luminizing. One of the girls even paints her nails dark green. They are passionate about what they do! What I love the most is that I can go there for small bags of soil rather than the economy bags from Wal-Mart or Home Depot that take up and entire corner of your room. Everything is packaged with urban plant life in mind. Sometimes I just go there to get a little extra oxygen and don’t even buy anything. It’s a safe space. I promise you won’t...

Upon entry into the bright and clean store with its entrance on Cooke Street, a vertical garden on display, diverted our eyes as we surveyed the store for other small plants. They did an excellent job of displaying the succulents and miniature plants in tasteful planters or terra cotta-like pots. Everyone inside the store observed social distancing while browsing and wore proper face masks. I spoke with one of the workers who shared with me that they'll be offering food sourced from their Mililani farm as soon as they complete setting up their kitchen. Yay! We're now looking forward to fresh-made salads, sandwiches, or maybe flatbreads that we can pick up to-go.

Walking into this store with all of the different plants around, I suddenly felt like my lungs were taking in cleaner air and the greenery around had me feeling more enlivened.

Welcome to the Kaka'ako neighborhood, and we're looking forward to...

Loved the store decor and the plants. Only reason this rating is 3 is because the person who worked there barely acknowledged us while we were perusing the shop. We asked several questions but felt very uncomfortable with how they were short and curt answers. After selecting we wanted to buy we went to the counter to pay for it. We tried to get her a few times and she did not even turn around. When she did she was very surprised to see us standing there. I would love to visit again but the whole interaction felt so under whelming and...