On Mt Cook highway across the road from Lake Pukaki, 600 metres above sea level, a 20-acre mantle of striking purple creates a spectacular visual anomaly in the otherwise barren landscape. Here’s why tourists stop the bus at New Zealand Alpine Lavender.
In February 2009 businessman Allan Tibby approached Blake Foster with a suggestion of partnership in an alpine lavender farm. He had seen that tourists overseas flocked to lavender farms and thought an alpine lavender experience easily accessible from the road would be a fabulous attraction here. Not only was he right about that, but New Zealand Alpine Lavender has also gone on to win many awards for its high quality lavender and lavandin oil products.
That it should be organic from the start was without doubt. Blake had grown up on a grain-cropping farm in Saskatchewan, so had farming experience, and had managed an organic health food store for nine years.
“After I became chemically sensitive, I developed a desire to take care of the earth,” he says, “to not poison the land; rather, to be a caretaker and steward of the land. Thus, to farm organically became important to me.”
A well-oiled machine
Now the farm is well established, with Blake and his wife Jackie working full-time, boosted by five or six seasonal staff during the harvest.
From spring through early summer Blake weeds, tills, cuts grass, prepares the still, harvests, distills, prunes, weeds and tills again. Jackie manages and maintains the bottling plant, while Blake looks after everything else, including marketing. Jackie and Blake’s daughter also works on the farm when she visits.
New Zealand Alpine Lavender products are sold online, at the on-site shop in season, and Blake is also eyeing Asian markets. Here on the Mt Cook Highway, the long purple rows attract a steady stream of visitors to the gift shop and to wander amongst the fragrant lavender throughout the flowering period.
It’s taken a lot of effort to achieve this well-oiled machine.
Preparing alpine land
When they set out, Allan and Blake chose a relatively flat site obvious from the road with easy access. They hadn’t bargained on how challenging it would be to hoe the enormous field littered with sub-surface rocks. In many places there was more rock than soil and several contractors gave up.
Blake then researched and found a Spikes Rotor designed to drive rocks below planting depth and produce a workable bed of soil. One stubborn 20-foot rock resisted all attempts to move it, including two dynamite blasts, so Blake made a hillock with soil and planted over it.
The fine glacial soil tended to be acidic and porous so he added dolomite to build up the pH and increase magnesium.
Planting at altitude
Allan had approached New Zealand lavender expert Virginia McNaughton for advice on planting and species selection. She grew many new species of lavender, including Violet Intrigue, Molten Silver, and Avice Hill.
Blake planted 100,000 plants, spaced at 500 mm, in rows 350 metres long. The main varieties are Pacific Blue, Avice Hill, and Violet Intrigue – all angustifolias (true lavenders). He also planted Grosso and Molten Silver, which are lavandins (hybrids that contain camphor; angustifolias don’t). Lavandins bloom later and are more susceptible to cold, though one Molten Silver parent grows at around 3650 metres in Europe – almost as high as Aoraki Mt Cook.
Short sub-alpine growing seasons and late spring and late summer frosts can easily destroy crops, but herbs grown at altitude produce unique characteristics because of the stress from temperature, strong UV, snow melt, fierce winds, and heavy frosts. In summer the temperature can range from 30°C at 3 pm to 1°C at night. To survive, plants must adjust. The adaptation causes secondary metabolites (unique chemicals) which may have therapeutic properties to be formed in the plants.
Blake feeds his lavenders seaweed fertiliser, and sprayed a mycorrhizal fungus on the initial plantings to increase their capacity to absorb water and nutrients.
He uses drip irrigation for fertigation as well as watering in November, December and after the harvest. Good northwest rain falls in spring and early summer but the bigger plants need more water.
Rare bumblebee haven
Lavender is self-pollinating, but it’s also a magnet for bees and other pollinators. New Zealand Alpine Lavender is a haven to four bumblebee species including the rare short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus). Originally introduced to New Zealand from 1885–1906 to pollinate clover crops, B. subterraneus subsequently became extinct in the UK.
In New Zealand its range is limited to inland areas of central and southern South Island, and there are fears it has become even more restricted. According to Lincoln University scientists, the data strongly suggests they are in decline and possibly close to extinction.
“New Zealand Alpine Lavender is the only place to my knowledge you can be sure to find them,” says Blake.
Frost fighting
Lavenders are generally hardy and attract few pests, but here, pests don’t survive the frost. In fact, frost has almost devastated the crop several times. After a -22°C frost in 2015, an expert determined that warm air sat 10 m above ground level, so Blake purchased a frost fan in 2016. After severe frosts in 2018, he bought two more.
When temperatures at the top of the plants reach 0.5–1°C, the frost fans automatically rotate every six minutes, blowing the warmer higher-elevation air down over the plants to stop frost from settling.
At home, a couple of kilometres down the road, the Fosters maintain a vege garden and, like the lavender farm, it needs frost protection too.
Weed control
Being organic, New Zealand Alpine Lavender must rely on natural weed control methods. Blake uses a mechanical steam-weeder, as well as manually weed-whacking, hoeing, and pulling weeds out by hand.
The lavender rows have weed mat on them but initially this wasn’t plain sailing. Or rather, it was sailing – in high winds 800 feet of weed mat flapped about on the highway until it was retrieved and an anchoring system devised.
“Keeping weeds under control using organic methods is time consuming,” says Blake. Their steam-machine uses water super-heated under pressure to 120°C – this defoliates the weeds.
“They grow back but you go over them afresh before they’re too big and defoliate them again. That depletes the weed’s reserves so by the third time they’re dead. The ground also becomes sterilised so new weeds don’t grow unless you disturb the soil and open seed banks in the ground.”
Harvesting
The aroma of the flower heads determines when the harvest begins, usually late January. Harvesting is mechanical and some blooms miss being gathered, leaving forage for the bees, which stay until the flowers are pruned or wilted by mid-March.
Blake brings in the entire harvest with the help of seasonal workers over three weeks, depending on the weather.
Harvesting takes parts of the lavender stem with the flowers. The stems contain a small amount of oil but the best quantity and quality is in the flower-head oil sacs. Some stem is required in the still-pot so steam penetrates the contents evenly.
Getting the good oil
The harvest is immediately processed to extract the oil while fresh. Lavandins produce more oil than angustifolias, but each variety produces a distinct fragrance.
It takes about 200–300 mature plants to produce a litre of oil, depending on the efficiency of the harvester. As plants age they produce less.
Stainless steel still-pots hold approximately 160–180 kg of harvested material evenly stomped down by an enthusiastic worker to ensure maximum oil extraction. Once the still-pot is in the still with lid closed, steam from a boiler is piped through the bottom, converting the oil from the plant material into vapour as it rises. The steam and vapour then go into a condenser, travelling down tubes surrounded by cold water. The cooled vapour and steam condense back into oil and water respectively, and escape through the bottom of the condenser into a separator. The oil rises to the top and is decanted into glass bottles.
Each still-pot yields 2–3 litres of oil, and 40 litres of hydrosol (the aromatic water that results from the steaming process). Hydrosol is used as air freshener, facial toner, and as an antifungal and antibacterial cleaning aid.
After distillation Blake uses the waste material in compost or mulch.
High notes
Testing the new season’s oil is the good part. Gas chromatography breaks the oil down into its chemical components and the results are compared with known pure lavender oils.
Blake is on the executive of the New Zealand Lavender Growers Association, and has been an oil judge for the Association for seven years. “Judging is about aromatic compounds (high and low notes), balance, any unpleasant notes, and how the oil compares with a good oil of the same variety. It requires the right nose to be a judge,” he says.
Pruning lavender
With the harvest finished, pruning begins. Blake uses powered hedge-clippers to prune the sides and tops of the plants, and a Japanese tea harvester with a specific lavender modification for the detail. Both tools allow very fine blade cuts.
“Cut back to just above the woody stem, and leave a few growth stems above the woody part,” Blake advises. “The new growth comes out in spring. If you don’t prune, the plant will become woody and turn into a shrub which produces fewer flowers because the energy goes into the wood. Healthy plants must be well-pruned every year.”
On top of the world
The coming tourist season is hard to predict but it’s likely New Zealand Alpine Lavender will attract more Kiwi visitors this summer. It’s become a popular location for wedding photo shoots, and a bigger, permanent shop is on the cards, but Blake says their success is defined more by managing to plant where a lot of people said it wasn’t possible to grow.
New Zealand Alpine Lavender at a glance
- 20+ acres at Lake Pukaki
- 100,000 lavender plants. The main varieties grown are: Pacific Blue, Avice Hill and Violet Intrigue (all angustifolias); plus smaller numbers of Molten Silver and Grosso.
- New Zealand Alpine Lavender has won many awards for its oils, including five gold, fourteen silver awards, and four presentation cups.
- Certified organic by BioGro since 2010 (lavender oil and buds), and since 2019 (lavender roll-ons and soap)
Lavender fragrances
- Pacific Blue: light, sweet, simple structure, good impact, clearly defined aromatic notes.
- Avice Hill: strong oil with bold impact, good persistence, complex balance of sweet, dry, woody, and earthy aromatic notes.
- Violet Intrigue: rich oil, strong impact, good persistence, huge round complex combination of sweet, warm, and rich aromatic notes.
History and uses
Lavender’s written history is over 2500 years old. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks used lavender for perfume, cleansing and purifying the skin, and Roman soldiers carried it with them to heal wounds.
Benefits: Relief from bug bites, stings, minor burns, cuts and wounds, itchy skin and scar tissue. Calming properties make it a helpful sleep and stress relief aid.
Copyright Theresa Sjoquist – September 2020
First published in Organic NZ magazine – September/October 2020 Vol 79 N0.5 – http://www.organicnz.org.nz
Theresa Sjoquist
Bioforce
Daily Organics
Theresa Sjoquist
