"I assume you want to come here," says Leland Miyano, the O'ahu-born sculptor, landscape designer and naturalist.

Here — his home in Kahalu'u — is where Miyano's garden lies and where his love of science, nature and sculpture converge. Here, among the cycads, bromeliads, ferns and palms he grew from seed — not to mention the tons of salvaged rocks he placed by hand — is where he created the works for his current show at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

As a landscape designer, Miyano is known for several high-profile projects including the Friendship Circle Garden at his alma mater, the University of Hawai'i-Manoa; the renovation of the garden at The Contemporary Museum; and the Joanna Lau Sullivan Chinese Garden at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. But it's his own garden (which has been featured in books and national magazines) where he finds his spirit and inspiration, where the symbiotic relationship between gardener and garden feeds his larger ideas about the world.

For "Historia Naturalia et Artificialia," the soft-spoken Miyano brings those ideas to bear. The germs of experimentation that permeate his free-flowing junglelike space — the huge rock from a well altered into sculpture, the tree branch growing into a living bench, the wall molded into the shape of a Japanese crane — sharpen and focus on his concepts of balance and consumption.

The 2008 Catharine E.B. Cox Award recipient calls into question man's historical relationship with nature and shows his lifelong passion for conservation and science. " 'Iliahi," the 3,000-pound red alabaster sculpture in the Honolulu Academy of Arts Mediterranean Court, may look like a lovely organic work, but it's also a comment on the loss of sandalwood on Moloka'i. In the Holt Gallery's "Volcanic Heart," a cross-shaped installation of basalt and wood further critiques the destruction of resources. The rocks are from the Kapa'a Quarry: the caldera of the Ko'olau Volcano and an ancient Hawaiian adze quarry, which now produces gravel for O'ahu roads.

Walking along the winding stone pathways of his lush, dense, garden, Miyano says, "We are always going to use resources, our metabolism demands that. But it's how we use it, how we manage these things, that will carry us into the future."

Several of the works in the show are burned, the impact of 15 years working with famed Brazilian landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx. Miyano met Burle Marx shortly after his graduation from UH. Initially, Miyano wanted to go to "experience the rainforest and nature of Brazil." At the time, he didn't comprehend the stature or influence of his future mentor, one of the world's most respected landscape architects, but also an artist and leader in conservation practices.

"That's where my main education came in," Miyano says. "The correlation was there. I knew Hawai'i's forests were disappearing. But when I went to Brazil — and Brazil, it's so big — I thought how much can they destroy? But then I saw the fires. And when you see one fire that's as big as O'ahu, you never forget that kind of destruction."

As with many environmentalists, Miyano's longstanding relationship with nature began as a child. He was walking along the sands of 'Ewa Beach, alone, when the water suddenly withdrew to the breakers, revealing an undersea world of fish, of coral caves and rocks lying on the ocean's floor.

"I remember the fish flipping on the sand," says Miyano, still mystified by the experience. That day, in May 1960, an earthquake struck off Chile. The eventual tsunami didn't hit O'ahu (though it did destroy downtown Hilo, killing 61), but the effect on one impressionable youth remains.

"Much of my work has to do with understanding the cycles of life," Miyano says.

"As long as we have a balance — birth, love, decay and death. If we have some kind of balance, we can sustain our life here."

Sue Kiyabu is a freelance writer living in Honolulu.