Trite but true: during the bleakest, shortest days of the year art offers mental nourishment in providing new patterns, ideas, and welcome shots of colour. I recommend getting out of dodge.

I took a winter warmer roadie to Paloma Gardens near Whanganui, with a stop-off to get all loved up in Waikanae with Maungarongo Te Kawa’s dazzling whakapapa quilts.

Deep in the sheep-nibbled bowl-lands of Fordell hides a remarkable cultural and horticultural destination. For more than four decades at Paloma, Clive and Nicki Higgie have been developing an exotic oasis in the sheltered gullies. With seemingly endless creative and engineering energy they continue to plant and add quirky flourishes through sculpture and follies. While private sculpture parks north of Auckland get regular attention with their tick box collections of nationally acclaimed artists, the Higgies are anything but conventional, sharing their phenomenal subtropical kingdom more quietly.

I dream I'm happily lost in Paloma’s lush Henri Rousseau-like groves of giant palms, cacti, bamboo, magnolia and conifers. Broken into 10 zones, the estate brings together ‘’like’’ trees and plants in clusters from around the globe (130 species of palms alone).

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Like a painting, the world is nestled together in one bowl. You might one minute be crossing a black bridge bearing the text ‘‘French women are proof of God’’ to a bright yellow platform high in a grove of global palm sisters; the next be visiting the desultory Garden of Death (known by its acronym GOD) of poisonous plants, where Higgie humour sees the inclusion of ashtrays as sculpture.

There’s the work of a few Whanganui regional sculptors, like Steuart​ Welch, Simone Jacquat and, prodigiously, Clive Higgie himself. The work isn’t reaching for singular distinction or trying to say much (beyond the odd personal joke) - rather, much as the inventive bridges and gates do, it provides welcome framing and structure for the garden as a picture you walk into.

There are surreal exceptions. In one of two arboretums spread over large gully paddocks Clive has created a large earth labyrinth, with concrete crosses (Iona, Lorraine, Celtic, Christian) representing their ancestry studding the surrounding hillocks. On one hilltop elegantly stands an enormous, Gordon Walters’ inspired concrete slab with cut-out koru patterns.

A pottery walk commences with a Rick Rudd fountain and ending with small ‘‘breast pots’’ by Paul Maseyk and Len Castle. Pots on pedestals pepper the shrubbery, with a focus on the legacy of the 1970s generation of potters. Slowly collecting water, named with aluminium plant labels, they help give shape to the dense luxuriant garden.

At Paloma human passion and design echoes the surprise provided by extraordinary plants. Case in point their latest addition: a motorcycle museum. With close to 50 bikes Clive bills it as ‘’The Art of the Motorcycle’’, recalling the title of the 1998 Guggenheim New York exhibition which attracted the largest crowds in the museum’s history and gaining criticism from some quarters as “excessive populism”.

Populism is not a word Te Kawa shies from either. The Ngati Porou and Ngāti Kahungunu quilt maker is receiving increasing attention for his extraordinary large wall hangings, animating colour and bling within formats, melding in complex ways popular imagery, weaving and carving traditions to connect us to the natural world and ancestors. Te Kawa simply wants “to wrap my people in love, hugs and stories”, and runs community workshops in parallel. With a touch of the spirit-healing magician, he joyously connects participants with their whakapapa.

For Star Relations at Mahara iti - a pop-up gallery while Kāpiti’s new gallery is being built - work has been created with a Te Atiawa focus by Hauangi Parata, Sandra Parata-Rikihana and Ihipera Monowai-Whakataka, reflecting Te Kawa’s elevation of mana wāhine.

Te Kawa himself presents five works from the past two years. Included is his darker, technically daring tribute to Kāpiti ancestor Kahi Te Rau-o-te-Rangi. She is known for swimming from Kāpiti Island to the mainland, with her baby strapped to her back, to raise alarm about a coming war party. Here threads spin tumultuous seas, enfolding you in the moonlit midst of the eye of a storm.

Making a welcome winter appearance is Hineraumati, a representation of the summer goddess found in warm and fertile soil. Reflecting the number of Māori in construction and care roles, audaciously the work is stitched on a base quilt made from orange hi-vis safety vests, with chevrons made from the reflective strips, endowing such public maintenance work - maintaining our safety on the earth - with mana.

An intense collage of forms and materials, Te Kawa works extensively with sequins. The goddess unfurls as if wishing to wrap giant golden bat wings around you, and she is actually pretty fearsome; to be respected. Her many teeth glitter. In a complex weave, representations and materials also evoke for me Indian, Farsi (Persian) and Chinese treatment of deities. Te Kawa can make the whole world feel invited to a dance of the spirit.