The 30-something couple make pesto, fresh rosemary bread, garlic croutons, and herb- filled salads. They grow waving forests of lavender and rosemary and have built a circular garden in line with the points of the compass.
They have garlic bulbs growing in their thousands and they braid their crop into stylish plaits after harvest time.
If that's not enough to prove they are up with the play, the couple are also permaculture buffs, singing the praises of organic gardening and caring for the earth.
But if you think they sound pretentious, you're way off track. People don't come more down-to-earth than Marian and Richard.
So much so, that my whole family was invited for lunch on interview day. For the record, my four-year-old, Clementine, vomited only once, all over herself, during the journey.
In Manaia, a gentle, wind-blown rain is falling. Richard welcomes us with a Cheshire Cat smile, and Marian with warm home-made bread and salad.
The parents of Rowan (4) and Thomas (10 months) love nothing more than spreading their table with home-grown produce.
"It feels fantastic," says Marian, who is a social worker. "I remember when we got this place, we harvested our first lot of vegetables and it felt so good that our garden was having an economic impact on our life."
And, oh, the taste of those vegetables. The carrots in the salad are so snappy and sweet, the lettuce so crisp, and the rainbowbeet juicy and colourful.
"My sister once brought us a bag of carrots," says Marian. "And I thought they were off."
They were just shop-bought.
Topping off the salad are crunchy croutons and the most wonderful garlic vinaigrette.
"Garlic is really trendy now, isn't it? It's more than just garlic bread," she says.
Tapping into that trend, the partners have chosen garlic as their main crop. Last year, they planted 500 bulbs, which were hugely successful sellers. This year they have put in 4500 bulbs.
Following ancient traditions, they put in two-thirds of their crop close to the shortest day of the year. The rest are planted in autumn, as do many of the growers in the South of France.
And the Manaia gardeners also have their own planting ritual. "We usually all go out and make it a family thing," says Marian. "Rowan quite enjoys planting garlic."
After the bulbs are safe under the earth, the couple focuses on nutrition. "Garlic needs really fertile soil," says Richard, a primary school teacher. "So put it in the best part of your garden. It also needs to be fed really well."
Mulch, about 5cm deep, is spread over the soil. "The garlic comes up through the mulch," he says. "That keeps the weeds controlled for the first two and a half months."
They then feed the garlic with liquid fertiliser, made from a mixture of fish manure and rotted convolvulus root soaked in water.
"It's great stuff that. It's made our tomatoes grow," says Marian.
Sidetracked on to the fire-engine-coloured fruit, the pair explain how they have trialed a whole bunch of different types. "We have found the old favourites like veefsteak, moneymaker and potantate out-perform all the other varieties we have tried," says Richard.
They pick so many tomatoes they have resorted to freezing them.
But they don't go in whole - Marian fills up her food processor with fresh, uncooked tomatoes, throws in a handful of herbs (pizza thyme, basil, white Greek marjoram, parsley and chives) and whizzes them to pulp. she puts these in containers and freezes them, ready to be used as the base for lasagne and bolognaise.
Pesto-making is also on her kitchen agenda, but let's get back to feeding garlic . . .
After the liquid fertiliser, Richard adds a light dressing of blood and bone.
"If it's dry in December they also need lots of water. That time is crucial for bulb formation," he says.
In New Zealand, about 90% of the garlic sold in shops is of the one variety - prinatore. This is grown under licence to Food and Crop Research.
"You can buy seed from a licensed supplier to grow for consumption and to sell," says Richard. "But we can't keep it to replant ourselves."
Which can be a problem for organic growers, who want to ensure their crops are not tainted by chemical nasties.
So, the pair contacted other organic green-fingered folk and people selling heirloom seeds, to track down non-licensed seed. The response was overwhelming, in some cases, with Marian and Richard now into full-on garlic production.
"We are growing four main kinds for this year," says Richard. "And all the rest are just test patches."
There has been a lot of trial-and-error gardening on the couple's half-acre (about 2000mē) section on Terou St.
"I do things by instinct, what I feel will work," he says, staring wistfully out at the misty rain. "Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't."
Marian and Richard live by the rhythms of nature.
"Something that is really important to us is our relationship with the earth," he says. "For me, that's one of the reasons I'm organic, and permaculture fits our philosophy, really. We are aiming to work with nature, rather than work against it."
So, what is permaculture?
"It's coined from two words - permanent and agriculture," Richard says.
"The underlying purpose is to find systems of land use that are sustainable in perpetuity. That includes the social systems that interact with the land-use systems. Taranaki Green Dollars fits in well with that."
Permaculture people think very carefully about what they put in their gardens.
"When we plant something, there should be three reasons for it," Richard says. "For example, the rosemary hedge is really good because it provides shelter for our fruit trees, you can eat it, and it looks nice and smells nice."
Marian gets clucky about the six Blue Orpington chickens in residence, which she says are great with her kids. "Rowan calls them all Janice."
"Eggs are just one of the by-products of our chooks. They also fertilise the soil and dig it over," she says.
"They're two-legged tractors," Richard laughs.
Marian: And they provide feathers for the kindy.
Richard: And so each thing in the garden has a whole multitude of things it contributes. The principle of permaculture is that the more habitats we can provide for things to live in, on a piece of ground, the greater the overall productivity will be.
Rotating crops is also part of the philosophy, which is particularly important for garlic.
"If you keep them in the one place for too long, you get a buildup of virus," Richard says.
When preparing the land for garlic, Richard and Marian plant potatoes. "That breaks the soil down and you dig for couch (twitch) as well, which gets rid of your biggest problem weed."
They also put in garden crops of oats, lupins and mustard to nourish the soil. And Richard extols the virtues of planting daicon radish: "It is very deep-rooted, so it mines nutrients deep in the soil and brings them up."
Mustard keeps the wire worm away, while oats and lupins provide nitrogen and organic matter.
Sitting at the kitchen table, we wait for a break in the rain. With no blue sky in sight, and time ticking by, Marian and Richard batten themselves down with coats, and shelter me under a ridiculously large sun umbrella.
Outside, the garlic grows in rows of green streaks, backed by protective hedges and watched over by olive trees, tender young things that have come up with the goods - just.
"I picked 72 olives last year," Richard enthuses. He also took supple branches to Mokoia School for his pupils to turn into Olympic wreaths during a study of Greece.
Throughout the garden are fruit trees, but it's a plain old lemon tree that catches my eye. The low-lying tree is laden with huge golden fruit.
"The key is a lot of mulch," says Richard.
"And watering in the dry weather," Marian adds.
In the corner of the garden, there is wilderness. "I like to have an area that you can let go into wild grass," Richard explains. "Because it provides a space for predators, like wasps, skinks and wetas, things that like to live in areas that are not disturbed."
"It's a working garden. It's not a beautiful garden or a pretty garden, and it's definitely not park-like," he says.
Marian agrees with the working sentiment - just ask her about the circular garden, planted with herbs and vegetables. The beds have been formed by red-ochre bricks, and the paths lead to the north, south, east and west.
"I would never do it again," Marian says, shaking her head. "It was just such a lot of work, and to get the angles right . . ."
Her idea of working in the garden is time out from her social work job. "I have a pretty stressful job, and it's a complete break away from it. I work with people all the time, so it's quite nice to have my outside interest not centred around that, but around the garden."
Richard, who grew up on a plant nursery, says a permaculture garden is labour-intensive. But that's OK with him - it's his way of life, and his only form of exercise.
GOOD LIFE: Marian McDonald and Richard Self relax in their productive garden, seeking peace and harmony with nature - and perpetuity.
(Picture by Mark Dwyer)
But mostly, Marian and Richard enjoy sharing the garden with each other and their children. "I think it's really important to have nature as part of our lives," says Marian.
So, a good night out for this pair is down in the greenhouse.
"Before I started work, we used to go out and do the potting at night in the shed," says Marian. "The kids were in bed and we had the monitor on so we could hear them. We just really enjoyed it."
With a bit of help from garlic, herbs, veges and chooks, Marian and Richard have created their very own style of Manaia culture. And it's looking permanent.