From the editor - February 2010

 

It is nearly time for us to bring NZ House & Garden alive with our house tours, in which we collaborate with the Cancer Society of New Zealand and Look Good Feel Better (a charity helping women facing cancer) to open the doors of some of the country’s most interesting homes.

Our tours are held on four subsequent Fridays in March and we visit Matakana/Omaha (just north of Auckland on the east coast), Auckland/North Shore, Wellington and Christchurch. I have been to most of the homes and what a delight is in store. The houses represent a broad array of decorating styles, from many eras of New Zealand’s history and across a range of budgets. In Christchurch, for example, we have a tiny Victorian working man’s cottage and, just a few kilometres away, a grand modern home that might even be termed a palace. Click here to find out how to get a ticket.

Variety is the spice of life and in each issue of NZ House & Garden the goal is to create a rich mix of homes with interesting decorating styles, from different regions of New Zealand and in a variety of sizes and forms.

Can you imagine a pair of homes more contrasting in style than the first two in this issue? On the one hand, Robin Edwards and Mary Forbes have created a calm rural oasis in a mock-Tudor mansion near Drury, south of Auckland. Turn over just one page and you are in the unique world of the Burns-Nevin home on the Coromandel. This handmade house is aptly described by associate editor Sally Duggan, who wrote their story, as a sculpture they happen to live in. For two years Gary and Julie shovelled earth and water to create the wet adobe mix from which they built their house. Imagine it – two years of backbreaking work and nights of sleeping in a 10sqm shed without a shower. Well done, those people.

That sentiment is extended to everyone in this issue, including former Wellington mayor Fran Wilde, who has renovated a small Wairarapa cottage, and Aucklanders Cathy Gould and Roger Donald with their newly built Omaha beach house. (This house, by the way, is part of the Omaha house tour.)

The only problem I have with my wonderful job as editor of NZ House & Garden is the urge to rush off to buy plants as soon as I read our garden stories. This issue is no exception. Jotted down on a notepad beside me as I proofread are: candelabra primulas, hostas, bog iris, more willows, Rosa ‘Alchemist’ and R. ‘Sombreuil’ – and that’s just from two of the gardens we feature.

I do hope you feel inspired too.