Tim Zeestraten with his honey boxes.

LIZ BRESLIN

Lavender. It’s great for reducing anxiety and stress, improving sleep and maximising brain function.

Still, it’s definitely not just surrounding themselves with hectares of lavender plants that accounts for the growing successes of the Wanaka Lavender Farm. Experience, hard work and meticulous planning are part of how they’ve built their business.

It was six years ago that brothers Tim and Stef Zeestraten bought the land along Morris Road and State Highway 6. Lavender ran in the family before this purchase: their parents were owners of a lavender farm up in Kaikoura so the guys had plenty of prior knowledge. Still, it was a decision that Tim said "many friends found funny – two boys starting a lavender farm - but we always wanted to live in Wanaka and if we’re going to live here, then we’ve got to do something that sustains us living here, and this is it.”

The Wanaka Lavender Farm is now open for its fourth summer and business is booming. Tim puts this down to ticking the small boxes on the way to the big vision – "making sure the rabbits can’t get through the fences, making sure we’ve worked out there’s a viable market and then cranking into it and thinking large scale. If you get the right numbers in and line them up then you can prepare for it and say, ‘OK, we can’t do it this year but maybe in a few years.’”

The farm comprises twelve hectares in total, so they’ve got land to expand further on their vision, preparing, this summer, for another 20,000 plants and hoping to have 50% of these in by April/May and then the rest by spring. The family has expanded further as well, with Tim’s wife Jessica now an integral part of the business and the Zeestraaten parents, who can’t resist helping out almost every day, around the edges or right in the thick of things. "Dad’s the perfectionist – always in the garden, tidying and weeding,” Tim says.

And there’s lots to do apart from the gardening and harvesting – making the oil, infusing the creams and the honey, and working on the business as well as in it. Planning is a crucial part of the business cycle. The gardens are mapped out on computers, creating the lines, squares and circles of lavender around existing trees, a very healthy veggie garden and the other complimentary plantings. The main lavender season is from November through to February and the gardens are looking stunningly purple just now with around thirty varieties in total. Some so tall, Tim said, that "you could lose your children around the corner in them.”

He may be speaking from experience as Tim and Jessica’s two-year-old daughter Maple is now part of the Wanaka Lavender Farm clan. The lavender planted includes the well-known Grosso and Pacific Blue, the intriguingly-named Violet Intrigue and the sensitive Dentata that will only grow in the shelter of their buildings. As of 2018, the Wanaka Lavender Farm will be open officially in the winter so part of current planning is working out a way to continue the guest experience when there aren’t so many flowers flowering. They’re putting a fireplace in and thinking visually and interactively.

Not all the planning is so fun. Consents are part of the process, Tim said. "Dealing with them, building and car parks, it just costs time and money and you’ve got to have thick skin, if you’re here for the long haul it’s not going to be an inexpensive exercise to get there but you can get through that, tick all the boxes and it is not impossible.” And, Tim points out, it’s good when the council has a strong plan for the area, because that helps everyone working in the area. Getting the coveted brown highway attraction signs signalling the Lavender Farm from State Highway 6 is another example that took "years worth of paperwork and a whole lot of money, with criteria like opening so many days a week, being an attraction with interactive experiences and an educational aspect … but the main one is road safety,” Tim explained. Plenty of people would stop or turn sharply on seeing the friendly purple tractor and the stunning fields of blooms anyway, so it made sense to have warning signs.

And it’s not just passing travellers who visit. The farm is firmly on tourist itineraries now and locals bring out their friends. Tim calls everyone who visits "guests, not customers, or visitors. It’s important that they’re guests, because that’s how we want them to feel.” Listening closely to guests is a major part of deciding how the family will develop the business. "They tell you everything. What they like. So we give them the same, give them more.” A great example of this is with the veritable farm of fun animals on site. It started with a sheep, and lambs, and people loved them and now guests can also visit with Milly and Kristen the highland cows, Koko the pig, a bunch of alpacas, and of course the bees.

The bees are a fairly recent venture and the home blend of lavender honey has proven to be one of the most popular purchases from the on-site shop. They also sell honey sourced from partners around the South Island and this has proven popular with guests, who have often read about it on Instagram, TripAdvisor or WeChat. Word of mouth is almost the only way they advertise, and it keeps the car park almost as busy as the bees.

While many people may turn to lavender for a calming break, Tim says the only way for them to destress is to leave town completely, which is more possible now they are not working seven days a week. Either that or go for a bike ride or a surf or a fish. All part of living the Wanaka dream.

PHOTO: Wanaka App