Artists Garden

Surprises everywhere in this glorious garden - mosaic steps, an extraordinary sculptural wall mosaic, welded steel sculptures and other creations. Colourful gardens of roses vegetables, citrus, flowers. Very unique.

The Giant's House - A historic Akaroa house with original artworks, terraced gardens with sculptures and mosaics. Very Unique. A creative feast and a wonderful experience. Romantic secluded and quiet, but only a few minutes walk to the centre of Akaroa.

The Giant's House was the first bank managers house in Akaroa, built 1880 of Totara and Kauri. It is grand in size, proportions, and features. Elegant and comfortable, it is designed and decorated in the French style. Being the home of an artist it balances and contrasts the historic and contemporary. Both the house and terraced gardens are full of surprises -expect the unexpected at The Giant's House!

The house has many extraordinary features - a grand entrance hall with mahogany staircase imported from France, original open fireplaces, beautifully proportioned rooms, a conservatory with mosaic floor, a large sunny sheltered verandah, quirky bathrooms, bright yellow farmhouse kitchen, comfortable large bedrooms with unique artistic features and artwork throughout.

At The Giant's House you will be pampered, and stimulated, in surroundings that will uplift your soul!- a very special experience, quite 'out of this world'.

The Giant's House has featured on top television programmes and in numerous house/art/garden magazines, papers both Nationally and Internationally. Her garden featured on "Maggie's Garden Show", Australian TV, the "NZ Gardener" the NZ House and Garden and in "Next" Magazine. Extreme Homes of the World documentary, supreme award winner "My House, my Castle".

Josie's work is firmly optimistic and ultimately, derived from the observation of the world around her. Known as a painter for many years, starting out traditionally and evolving into lively, colourful abstract paintings, her work took a turn into sculpture in 1993 adding a new dimension to her work.

Josie has been experimenting and working on her visual ideas with open-minded seriousness, exploring paint, colour, form and materials intuitively, continually expressing a 'joi de vivre' with that hint of mischief which provokes change. Ever adventurous Josie is mindful of the larger world and other ways of seeing. Josie's elegant abstract sculptures are seriously playful and a celebration of life. They are surreal, biomorphic entities, whimsical and flamboyant, organic and eccentric. Constantly changing metamorphosing forms confronting or circumscribing void spaces refer to her interest in horticulture reflecting the zany balance of nature.

Her work seems to pulse with a continually evolving sense of growth and development, with unpredictability and surprise in the final results. Josie's sculptures are in private collections and displayed in her Akaroa terraced garden, along with her large sculptural mosaic installations. She is currently working on a large light-up sculptural mosaic and other mosaic installations She is a regular exhibitor with numerous solo and group exhibitions in NZ and overseas.

Josie is the recipient of a number of awards and scholarships and has also undertaken art residencies in France, Spain, Turkey, India, China, Assisi, Italy; the International School of Art in Todi, Italy, the Vermount Studio Center in the USA and at the MacDowell Art Colony, New Hampshire USA, and South of France. Josie's home "The Giant's House", a grand historic home built in 1881. The Giant's House is a very special, unique and spiritual environment, situated in the historic French township of Akaroa, east of Christchurch. 

Three-quarters of an acre. Allow 1hour, some stay for hours.