Your Home and Garden – October 2022

Summary

Co-founder Alice Isles opens her Grey Lynn terrace to Your Home and Garden October 2022, proving personality beats perfection. The 11-page air fryer special delivers cake-included recipes, while The Tidy Lady’s Liz Bradley maps a definitive decluttering plan across 94 pages. Renovators weigh extend-or-sell with Jen Jones, and Halloween DIY gets spooky at page 90.

Through five home tours, a Denmark holiday house feature, and a dedicated garden-to-table food section, this NZ$9.50 issue balances aspirational makeovers with weekday-usable ideas. The Buckland cottage colour transformation at page 50 and the coastal weatherboard reno at page 62 anchor the makeover content, while the Wellington travel piece at page 136 rounds out the lifestyle offer.

Regular columns including Window Shopping, Yellow Mellow colour du jour, 10 of the Best furniture picks, and The Constant Gardener monthly checklist give it repeat-read practicality. The Living Well page and the Acapulco chair history add light cultural value, making this a solid reference issue for autumn nesting.

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Content Guide

▸ Cover Story / Homes

p.26 · Swatch This Space
Fashion designer and Hej Hej co-founder Alice Isles lets her Grey Lynn terrace speak for itself. Bold fabric samples, an upbeat palette, and photography by Helen Bankers turn a quirky Victorian into a lesson in personal style. Use one unexpected wallpaper to anchor an open-plan room before adding furniture.

p.50 · Flying Colours
A Buckland cottage gets a retro colour treatment from its fashion-designer owner. The palette shifts from muted to saturated, proving that paint is the cheapest renovation tool. Pick one heritage hue and repeat it on woodwork, walls, and a single ceiling for cohesion.

▸ Renovation / Makeover

p.72 · Go Big or Leave Home
Jen Jones walks through the classic extend-or-sell dilemma with real budget numbers and site constraints. She compares the emotional cost of moving against the disruption of building. Draft a side-by-side cost-per-square-metre table before calling any trades.

p.94 · Clean Slate
The Tidy Lady Liz Bradley produces a definitive decluttering guide broken into room-by-room timed sessions. She recommends attacking the pot drawer for 10 minutes on a Tuesday night rather than blocking out a whole weekend. Start with the drawer you open most and set a kitchen timer.

▸ Food & Air Fryer Special

p.116 · Frying High
Eleven pages of must-have air fryer recipes, including a cake chapter that proves the appliance does more than chips. The editor’s own test at page 127 compares crispness, cook time, and cleanup across three models. Try the cake recipe first: it is the truest test of your machine’s hot-air circulation.

p.128 · Modern Classics
Nicola Galloway serves up natural, family-friendly fare that works for midweek cooking. The recipes rely on whole ingredients and minimal processed shortcuts. Batch-cook the grain base and swap proteins across three dinners.

▸ Garden

p.108 · Vegetable Gardening in Small Spaces
With living costs rising, this guide helps readers get five-plus servings a day from pots and raised beds. It covers crop rotation in tiny footprints and which varieties yield best in partial sun. Plant one cut-and-come-again lettuce bed before the first frost.

▸ Regulars

p.104 · The Constant Gardener
Your monthly October checklist covers feeding, frost protection, and spring prune timing for NZ gardens. It also flags which bulbs to get in the ground now for December colour. Tick off the prune jobs before the first warm spell triggers new growth.

p.146 · A Brief History of The Acapulco Chair
A one-page design history of the iconic woven chair, tracing its 1950s Mexican resort origins through mid-century modern revival. It explains why the original handwoven version costs more than the mass-market copies. Check second-hand listings for vintage pieces with the original rope weave intact.

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Editor’s Take

This October issue gets the brief right: real homes that feel lived-in, an air-fryer special that is actually tested, and a decluttering guide that respects the reader’s limited time. The colour therapy feature and the Buckland cottage makeover are the visual high points. On the weak side, the Halloween DIY at page 90 runs only two pages and feels thin for a cover-promoted project, and the shopping section leans heavily on paid product placement without price anchoring. The Wellington travel piece at page 136 is genuinely useful for a weekend-planner audience. Overall, this issue suits the reader who wants one solid renovation idea, one weeknight recipe, and one organising win before Saturday.

Strengths
• 11-page air fryer special with editor-tested results
• Liz Bradley’s timed decluttering system
• Alice Isle’s genuinely personal cover home

Weaknesses
• Halloween DIY over-promised at just two pages
• Shopping pages lack price-anchored comparison

Verdict: Recommended — A solid October issue with genuine takeaway value, though the spooky section undersells its cover billing.