Daltons Plantation

29 March 2012


280 Hinuera Road West
Matamata
07 888 8999


www.daltonplantation.co.nz

Looking good in our 'Hi Vis'!

Making garden products is a dusty, dusty business. We piled into some big wagons and toured the Daltons site in Matamata, learning about the difference between a growing mix and compost. Our executive tour guide, Jeff Fairweather, said the site covered 150 acres – enlarging every time the operation purchased a neighbouring farm. Because the company uses chicken manure for some of its products, the large site offers an environmental buffer.
The placement of the business in Matamata may seem incidental but 400,000 years ago, the Waikato River ran through the Hinuera Valley. Today sand is 10 per cent of the Daltons business. The company mines the valley’s tract of sand to supply brown sand for civil construction, white sand for concrete companies and specialist sands for the golf and turf industries.

Bark products are collected by a team scavenging among the logs at the Port Of Tauranga and Carter Holt Harvey sites. The bark is munched and crunched into various sizes – from “bark” to “mulch”.
Daltons is the largest manufacturer or growing media in New Zealand. Jeff said it exported to the islands and the orchid industries in Japan, Taiwan and California.

During windy weather, a water truck works its way through the moonscape of mounds, wetting the various products to keep them from flying away. There was beige chicken manure, bark fines, sawdust, and waste gib-board. Minerals, such as calcium, ammonium and nitrate, were added to different blends, which were then laid in mounds for 12-14 weeks and turned regularly until they were ready to form the base of potting mixes.

Bark grading

Jeff said all of Daltons’ products were bark-based, rather than soil. One of the advantages of manufactured growing media was that it was not riddled with teeny weed seeds, he said. Fifteen per cent of its bark goes offshore.
Daltons also imported coconut husk blocks from Sri Lanka. It swelled when applied to the garden and exposed to rain. And it had some fairly exotic products, such as Lithuanian peat (rotted foliage). There was pumice and riverstones and a variety of fertilisers and organic products.

Specific fertilizer mixes

Jeff said that all the products in Matamata were available at Daltons’ depot in Hull Rd (Mt). It was a really fascinating insight for those of us who buy “soil” and have wondered what’s in it!
(PS: Jeff’s advice - don’t breathe in the first “puff” of air that comes out of a bag of compost)

And then… 

we went for a wander around the plantation garden, designed by Xanthe White. I was particularly taken with the ballarat apple (strong fruiting, needs sun) and I loved the garden of pinks and purples stretching out from the plantation verandah.

The award-winning water feature garden wasn’t such a thrill for me – it seemed too austere – but I fell in love with her use of ground covers.

The impressive vege garden

The edibles section was a dream. The circular gardens of fruits were joined by a vege patch to envy. The plantation kitchen uses only fruits and veg and herbs found in its own gardens so there is the full range of products and they are used to dramatic effect in the menu.
We had an absolutely exquisite meal. And, at $25 incl a coffee and the Daltons tour, it was very reasonable too.
Always good when you leave with a full puku and a massive plastic bag of fat feijoas!










Most striking: the leptinella rotunda inside the curls in the concrete courtyard, the lonicera ruby honey hedge, the rambling cottage garden, the very impressive leptinella walkways down to the water feature garden and the circular edibles garden.