About us, Phillip and Pat Hosking - Maddison’s Garden Art and Homestay.

We specialise in handmade metal garden art and hosting guests in our now too large home.

A BIT ABOUT US ..

Maddison’s Garden Art - Maddison - Maddie - was our beloved cat and gardening 'mate' for 21 years and we named our business after her .

Phillip did his apprenticeship in sheet metal work many years ago and for over 40 years we owned a successful metalwork manufacturing company.

We’ve lived and brought up our family in Coatesville in what was a perfect family home and these days is too large. Now semi-retired, Maddison’s Garden Art and later Homestay evolved as we combined our love of gardening with Phillip’s skills in welding and metalwork. Later our Homestay came about now that our son and daughter have ‘flown the coop’ … what to do with three bedrooms and two bathrooms! We’ve always enjoyed mixing with others and enjoy that we can share our property with and met both NZ and International visitors.

We design and handcraft all our Garden Art pieces ourselves, we also custom make bespoke pieces to order. Attention to detail is foremost during the making of every piece, making each unique and of a high quality.

We work together on the varied aspects of our business from the initial design, sourcing materials, visiting farriers to collect shoes. Then Phillip heads to his workshop, Pat replies to all enquiries and packs orders for the couriers. We both talk with our customers to ensure they are really happy with their choice. We enjoy meeting and chatting with people whether they are purchasing or browsing our products. We meet lovely people who come to look at Art, a real bonus, gardeners are such creative, friendly people, always happy to share. We especially like hearing of the enjoyment people get from our art in their gardens. It’s a real thrill to receive photos from them and seeing our art in their garden settings. Some stunning ideas and innovative landscaping.

We love that our oldest customer ( that we know of ) is an 85 year old lady who brought a Lotus Flower because she loved it so much! We have just sold a set of Seed Pods that is to be a 60th Wedding Anniversary Gift .. how special! The couple are in their late 80s and still enjoy gardening their half acre. There are 7 families giving the gift and with 7 individual pods to a set they loved the idea of one pod representing each family.

OUR GARDEN ART ..

Phillip individually handcrafts each piece of our garden art and sculptures. Pat often says they are all the same and yet slightly different. Phillip can also alter many of our items to suit your garden space. Our art is crafted from self-coloured mild steel, which brings a natural rustic element into your garden.

Our up-cycled horseshoe art is all from recycled horseshoes. We often use peoples own horseshoes to create a unique memento for them.

Our pieces are made from uncoated steel, over time as they age they will naturally develop their own unique beauty, an 'au naturale' rich rust patina that will blend in with your garden - that process is called Wabi Sabi.
If you prefer to keep the original look they can be coated with a metal protectant - we can advise some options.

We have sold our art pieces to both private gardeners and businesses all over NZ. Our art has been displayed in well known gardens - A La Fois, Coatesville, Auckland, Mana Lodge Equestrian, Havelock North, Hawkes Bay, Villa Margarita, a Corporate Hosting Venue in Wellington. Our work has been displayed in garden tours at Garden Marlborough in the South Island, The Heroic Garden Festival and The NZ Flower and Garden Show both in Auckland. The Hamilton Garden Festival Spring ‘21

OUR HOMESTAY ..

I always used to joke … “well, I’ll turn ‘west wing’ into homestay or 10 Pin Bowling Alley” !! Never a truer word spoken in jest! We have a daughter and son, 39 and 37 and four grandchildren who are all a large part of our lives. We are fortunate that they all live fairly close by.

One leaves home, returns with a partner, then goes, repeat other child then repeat with respective first grandchild as they wait to move into first home of their own. Finally they all go and then you become tired of all thats in the rooms is dust, cobwebs and spiders so … Maddisons Garden Homestay evolved!

Some of My Favourite Garden Quotes

- “Spring is Natures way of saying  Let’s Party!!” Robin Williams

- “Gardens are the result of a collaboration between art and nature" ....  Penelope Hobhouse

 - “To some, gardening is therapy for the mind. Art is therapy for my soul" .... Reno

- “I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I work in the garden" .... John Erskine  

- "Art is as natural as sunshine and as vital as nourishment." …. MaryAnn F. Kohl

- "The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies" .... Gertrude Jekyll

- "Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade" .... Rudyard Kipling

humph !! ... Phillip says the last quote epitomises Pat! - She says, only thing missing .. a wine !!  

Wabi-Sabi : The Japanese Art of Impermanence

Often in our world of mass-produced goods and machine-like cities, we strive for perfection, or in the case of modern process improvement techniques, near-perfection achieved by minimizing errors to within a prespecified amount. Coupled with this perfectionism is a tendency to toss away goods once they become marked on the surface or begin to show other signs of aging.

This quest for perfection and newness doesn’t stop with just our smartphones and sports cars. It creeps into every aspect of our lives, and eventually shuts us off from a natural world that resists being standardized. However, by ignoring perfection and embracing all that is worn or asymmetrical, you can begin to see the world differently. This, says Leonard Koren, will open you up to “the delicate balance between the pleasure we get from things and the pleasure we get from freedom of things.”

This welcoming of imperfection into your life is at the heart of Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which means “impermanent, imperfect and incomplete.” The word comes from two separate words. “Wabi” describes the creation of perfect beauty through the inclusion of just the right kind of imperfection, such as an asymmetry in a handmade ceramic bowl (contrasted with the precision of a machine-made bowl). “Sabi” reflects the kind of beauty that develops with age, such as that which occurs with the oxidation of the surface of a bronze statue.

Nature is the best source of wabi-sabi aesthetics. And when you are attuned to the world, you begin to see wabi-sabi in the most unlikely places. The cracks in tree bark, a sign of healthy maturity; or the cracks in our own faces as we age, as we gain wisdom along the way. Krishnamurti goes deeper, saying that our souls are all made of the same paper; our uniqueness, though, comes from the creases in that paper from the folding and unfolding of our experiences.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There’s a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

~ Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”