Last July, 11 wooden posts showed up on the mauka side of Kailua Beach Park. They were scattered across the sand with no explanation beyond a short note on the city parks website asking beachgoers to leave them alone. The note said each post marked the future spot of a milo, kou or heliotrope tree. On August 29, 2026, about 50 volunteers put those trees in the ground, just makai of the canoe hale parking lot on the Lanikai side of Kaʻelepulu Stream.
The trees are the last stage of a rebuild that has worked through the beach in a deliberate order since November 2024. The early stages looked like loss, with trees cut down, sand bulldozed and areas roped off. The trees are the first part most people will see as something added.
Sand first, and Mōkapu Point came back into view
The project covers the stretch of shoreline between Kailua Road and the park's boat ramp. It is a joint effort of the city's Department of Parks and Recreation, the city Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources' Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, Hawaiʻi Sea Grant, and a group of Windward residents and regular beachgoers.
The first work was removal. Undermined ironwoods came out, along with old irrigation pipes and concrete pads that erosion had left exposed. In January and February 2025, crews took three steps that set up everything after:
- Moved sand from around the parking lot, showers and comfort station back to the shoreline.
- Pulled out inoperable irrigation lines, undermined concrete foundations and benches.
- Put up temporary sand fencing to keep wind-blown sand out of the backshore until plants could hold it.
In late July 2025, the same treatment reached the area from the sidewalk to Kaʻelepulu Stream. Crews wet the accumulated berm sand and pushed it forward, reshaping it to a more natural slope. They dug up the existing pōhuehue and saved it for replanting in front of the comfort station, then added more sand fencing to keep sand out of the parking lot.
The city's project update includes a before-and-after pair taken from the parking lot. In the November 22, 2024 photo, a high sand hill hides Mōkapu Point. In the August 5, 2025 photo, after the sand was pushed back, the point shows over a gentler slope. That same month, the city's Department of Facilities Maintenance began clearing the Kaʻelepulu Stream mouth on August 11. Parks crews moved the dry, bleached sand that had been piled behind the lifeguard stand down to the boat ramp, where it was set aside for dune work.
Ground cover second, in plots that had to prove themselves
Once the sand was in place, the next step was to see whether plants would hold it. Before any large planting, the team laid out two test plots, each 10 feet by 20 feet with about 220 plants. One got pōhinahina and nanea. The other got ʻakiʻaki and ʻākulikuli.
The first community planting day came on May 31, 2025. KHON2 reported that volunteers and city and state staff placed 344 native plants between the canoe hale parking lot and Lifeguard Tower 8B.
By August 5, the two plots had fared differently. Area 1 was doing well and had spread past its planted edges. Area 2 had been buried by drifting sand, though its ʻākulikuli was still growing outward.
On September 27, 2025, more than 150 volunteers planted 1,800 plants in two hours, according to the city. Nanea, pōhinahina, ʻakiʻaki, ʻākulikuli and pōhuehue went into the main area. Variegated naupaka and pōhinahina went in near the parking lot, and ʻakiʻaki went along the Kaʻelepulu Stream bank. The planning deck had called for three planting areas of about 520 plants each, with post-and-rope fencing and 20-foot-wide pathways between them.
Those rope lines are the ones beachgoers walk around today. The city says they're there to protect the young plants from foot traffic while temporary irrigation gets them established. The sand fencing stays up until the plants are established.
The ironwoods that came down in December
The hardest stage to watch came next. The city closed part of Kailua Beach Park from December 8 to 11, 2025, to remove 12 ironwoods. Two had already fallen, nine were still standing over eroded sand, and one was a leftover stump.
Hawaii News Now covered the removal and spoke with a resident who has gone to Kailua Beach for 45 years and has watched it shrink. In the same story, Nate Serota of the parks department said the city doesn't want to remove trees unless they pose a safety hazard, "because they're still trees."
Chip Fletcher of the UH School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology told Hawaii News Now that the city was right to take them out, and explained what ironwoods do to a beach:
"The dense root system tends to lock up sand very similar to a seawall, so instead of a nice sloping beach migrating landward with sea level rise, you get a scarp, or a vertical erosion."
That explains the order of the work. The city's project page says ironwoods hold little sand in their roots and keep native plants from growing, and that more of them will come out as the project goes on. The new trees can only go into spots where the old ones are gone and the slope has been rebuilt.
Trees last, and the community picked them
The tree plan came out of the project's Community Advisory Group, which has met monthly since January 2025. The August 2025 update set out the group's guidelines for what became Zone 4, the area between the Kaʻelepulu Stream mouth and the Lanikai-side lifeguard stand:
- Put trees at existing blowouts, to help with continuing sand loss.
- Plant trees in clusters by type to form small ecosystem pockets.
- Space the heliotrope to match the two trees already growing near the shoreline.
- Use the tree types the community requested.
That deck estimated a November planting. The trees actually went in on August 29, 2026. That day, volunteers planted 11 coastal trees along with 25 variegated naupaka and 300 ʻakiʻaki plugs. They also weeded out invasive plants so the irrigation water would go to the dune plants.
"We've done three community planting events up to this point, which have been focused on the low-lying dune plants," Hawaiʻi Sea Grant extension agent Amy Wirts told Hawaii News Now. Her count lines up with the sequence above. The ground cover went in first, over three separate planting days, and only then did the first trees go in. The work on planting day included digging, planting, watering, staking and weeding.
What the stretch by the canoe hale looks like now
A walk from the Kailua Road end toward the boat ramp passes through the project's stages in order. First comes the reshaped sand near the comfort station, then the September 2025 planting area with its post-and-rope fencing, and then, on the Lanikai side of the stream, the milo, kou and heliotrope that went in this August.
The city describes the goal as more than holding sand. It wants a wider active beach, restored ocean access and room for a range of recreational uses. KHON2 reported that the project supports action item 5.4 of Climate Ready Oʻahu, the city's climate adaptation strategy, which calls for working with communities to restore beaches and dunes in city parks. The city's project page also includes a 1956 photo of the Kailua Beach Park shoreline for comparison.
The city hasn't posted a date for the next planting. It says details on community planting will appear on its Kailua parks project page. Anyone who wants updates or a seat in the monthly working group can email Amy Wirts at [email protected]. In the meantime, the rope fencing stays up to keep foot traffic off the young plants.
We follow changes at Kailua Beach Park closely. If you'd like to talk about how the park, the stream mouth and life along Kailua's shoreline figure into your plans, Jenn Lucien is glad to help. Request your Neighborhood Market Review.
