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From the editor - November 09

A conversation pit was high on the list of desirable house features when I was a teen. Groovy friends, whose parents let them wear pink bell-bottomed trousers in public, lived in homes featuring exotica such as shag-piled conversation pits. Sometimes the carpet was orange. One friend�s home had a hanging chair just like the one featured on last month�s cover. I recall conversations with her older brother and his friends while I swung nonchalantly, pretending to be cool, as clearly as I remember what I did one minute ago.

The Claude Megson-designed West Auckland home of Roy and Sue Good on page 32 provoked excited reminiscing around our meeting table about 1960s and 70s houses and all the great aspects of that architectural period. Mind you, we are an undiscriminating bunch when it comes to falling in love with houses. Nothing excites us more than houses and gardens � apart from cake, that is. It is an undeniable fact that cake (or any fabulous recipe for that matter) really gets us going. So the most-loved desserts in this issue have already prompted quite a lot of cooking. If only it had all made its way to the office � that would have been fun.

We have oohed and aahed over the tiny apartment Aucklander Barbara Drake fashioned into a jewel box in a former 70s motel unit in industrial Mt Albert. How clever is that? We have mentally wandered the Buxton-designed grounds of the Rutherfords� homestead in North Canterbury, wondering what it would be like to know that your ancestors have walked this way for 150 years.

And we all laughed to hear that sculptor Paul Dibble and wife Fran did not take to their Palmerston North villa in a love-at-first-sight manner as so many of our homeowners do. The relationship was tetchy, with courtship being more a series of defensive manoeuvres against its worst features. Today this swish villa�s verandah still sports a splendid courting tower � very Frances Hodgkins � in which the young lady of the house may sit reading in a shady corner, awaiting her beau.

And I am dying to get back into my garden, so motivated am I by the achievements of this month�s crop of gardeners. Those trees, those ponds, those borders� they are an inspiration indeed. Enjoy.

Story: Kate Coughlan
Photographs: Mark Smith
Stylist: Claudia Kozub