16 August 2024
After a six-year hiatus Harbour Hospice’s Homes and Gardens Tour is returning. The bi-annual fundraiser was last held in 2018, then deferred due to covid.
“But it’s back by popular demand,” says Harbour Hospice Community and Events Fundraiser Emily Thomas. “We’re thrilled to be bringing it to the community again with a new look and a refresh.”
Around 300 ticket holders will have access to some of Point Wells’ most beautiful homes and gardens on Sunday 10 November. The tour will include more than a dozen properties, reflecting various styles from contemporary to timeless and traditional. Thomas says the homes will offer inspiration and a rare peek beyond the curtains into some of the area’s most spectacular residences.
The Point Wells Hall will be used as a central hub where coffee and food trucks will be set up alongside stalls selling plants and Christmas cakes, silent auctions, raffles and more.
Retired Point Wells couple Rae and Gavin Hamilton are among those who’ve generously opened their home for hospice.
Their home featured in the New Zealand House and Garden magazine in 2022, making them the “talk of the town” for a while, they joke. The couple designed their house seven years ago, with ease of mobility for Gavin top of mind.
Gavin uses a mobility scooter, after suffering from polio as a child, then much later in life losing the use of his legs – the effects of post-polio syndrome (PPS). The couple needed a spacious single-level home that he could move seamlessly inside and outside to the garden.
They designed their four-bedroom home themselves with extra-wide hallways and entrances then used a draughtsman to bring their plans to life.
Before moving to Point Wells the couple had lived in elevated homes with sweeping views, so having a beautiful garden became a focal point.
“I’ve never gardened in my life, but if you can’t have a view you need a nice garden,” Rae says. Auckland landscape designer Aaron Bell-Booth designed the garden then Rae and Gavin executed his design exactly with the help of local gardeners.
The garden is white-themed and elegant, filled with coastal rosemary, wisteria, hydrangeas, camellia and more. Rae says they spend almost as much time outside as they do inside.
They agreed to the tour after a hospice representative spoke at the Point Wells gardening club. “It is a way of giving back,” Rae says. “Hospice is an important part of the community and one day Gavin and I could very well need it ourselves.”
All proceeds raised from the homes tour will go towards hospice patient and family services in Warkworth/Wellsford. Harbour Hospice is the only specialist palliative care provider in the area, caring for one in three people in the community who are dying, supporting them to live well in the place they call home with the people they love.
Tickets for Harbour Hospice’s Homes and Gardens Tour, sponsored by Barfoot and Thompson, go on sale online on 20 August 2024.
This story was first published in Mahurangi Matters.
