Meet your Hosts

                         
                                    Your hosts Jenny and Geoff

Geoff was born in Wellington and in his twenties spent five years in the UK where he played rugby for London Irish. After that Geoff worked for Fuji Xerox for 25 years and during that time travelled overseas extensively. Currently he is a Consultant in sales and management training and is a Public Speaker.

Jenny was born in Devon in England into a farming family and emigrated to New Zealand in 1976. Her working life was in the areas of accounting and office management and currently has a home based business in the Wellness Industry.

We met in 1993 and lived in a small cottage in the suburb of Remuera in Auckland city. We made the move to Kumeu to our lifestyle block in 1996 where we started to create Willows Reach.
The house was 2 years old but otherwise the rest was just paddocks and a creek so we had an empty canvas to paint our dream.

Geoff's five years in the UK and Jenny's birthplace influenced the rustic English theme for the drystone walls, stables and outbuildings which feature around our farmstay.

It is important to us to be involved in the local community with Geoff currently the Chairman of the Kumeu Coast and Country Promotions group and Jenny is also on the committee. Jenny is a volunteer at the Kumeu Information center, on the committees for Kumeu Art in the Garden and Kumeu Scarecrow festival. She also assists the West Auckland Hospice with fundraising and sponsorship.

  Monteith (Monty) is a Mainecoon (American farm cat) and when fully grown will weigh approx 10 kilos at the moment he is only 19 months old. He is very affectionate and also like to follow our guests on their walks. Look at that bushy tail!!


Devon is a Ragdoll and is meant to be a house cat but was brought up with Storm before Monty arrived so he thinks he's a dog. When we go for a walk around the property Devon follows us even out to the back paddocks.



   Our Environmental Initiatives

We believe in protecting the beautiful environment of New Zealand and want to ensure that your children and grandchildren can visit and enjoy it. To that end, we've developed an environmental plan and welcome your support for this initiative.

We reduce our waste by recycling paper, glass, plastic, tin and aluminum cans so that we send less rubbish to the landfills and that more trees can live. We also compost all our food scraps, animal manure from the stables and garden weeds etc which we supply to a local organic grower and use in our gardens.

We are also offering our guests a towel and linen change agreement which ensures we reduce our water and energy use and out toilets have dual flush options.

We use biodegradable and non-toxic cleaning products and toiletries to keep our septic tank healthy and to reduce pollution of the waterways. We also have our septic system serviced twice a year to ensure it delivers good quality irrigation water to our gardens.

We buy local produce and use local tradespeople where possible which both supports employment in our local community and reduces the distance goods must travel to reach us