8 October 2025
This year’s Harbour Hospice Homes & Gardens tour unveils a completely new lineup of beautiful, handpicked properties. Among them is Jodie Hanna and Greg Dewe’s private oasis.
Before Jodie Hanna and her partner Greg Dewe and their kids moved into their Point Wells home, the front yard was a large, gravelled area. Perfect for parking multiple cars, but less appealing to the eye. The backyard housed a gentle slope that ran the entire length of one side of the lawn, and a children’s playhouse.
Jodie and Greg felt their outdoor spaces could work better for them, so invested in the expertise of a garden designer then worked with local landscaping company Rochford Landscapes to bring the design to life.
Today their front yard is a well-organised, calm green space where vegetables are grown most of the year. Jodie says, “I can see the garden from our kitchen/living area, and I go out all the time to do a bit of weeding or to pick veggies or herbs. I feel really connected to that space now, it’s like the garden has been brought indoors.”
Similarly, their back yard is much more user-friendly. They got rid of the slope and replaced it with a 25m lap pool and planted the gardens in natives and grasses so they’re robust, yet the space looks lush, green and verdant.
In November the couple is generously opening their property for Harbour Hospice’s Homes & Gardens Tour 2025. They’re normally private people but Jodie says they’re making an exception for hospice because they believe so strongly in its value to the community.
“Hospice cared for my grandmother with such compassion. Even now, years later, I’m moved to tears remembering how they preserved her dignity — it meant the world to our family.”
Jodie and Greg bought the property about 10 years ago and say that what they love most about it is that “we’re right in the middle of everything, yet it feels like our own private oasis”.
They’ve made some adjustments to the interior – renovating the kitchen and master bedroom and upgrading the bathrooms and laundry using macrocarpa timber milled from the family farm in Maungaturoto where Jodie grew up.
They say it’s easy to enjoy their home because it’s fit for purpose for a busy, active family. “The bones of this house are really simple, it's ply and board and batten, so it's kind of bulletproof. And the concrete floors, it really doesn’t matter if you're coming in from the beach with wet, sandy feet, or coming in from kicking a ball around, covered in mud. It really is a home for living in.”
Harbour Hospice Homes & Gardens Tour 2025
Point Wells
Sunday 9 November, 9.30am – 4pm
In between, recharge at the Homes & Gardens Hub at the Point Wells Town Hall, where everybody (you don’t need to be a ticket holder) is welcome to enjoy freshly baked morning and afternoon teas made by Hospice’s chef David, coffee and food carts, barbecued food from the Warkworth Butchery, raffles, plant stalls, art & craft, silent auctions and a beautiful green space for picnicking. This fun community event is supported by Principal Partners Bayleys in the North and Jodi Sterling – Bayleys Matakana Coast.
Click here for event details.
This story was first published in the 29 September 2025 issue of Mahurangi Matters.
