Wholesale plants delivered nationwide: how stock gets from Southland to your site

Quick answer: We freight wholesale plants from Invercargill to anywhere in New Zealand, Auckland and Northland included. Pallet freight between the islands commonly runs 2 to 4 working days. Autumn and winter are the best months to move stock, because plants sit cool and quiet in transit.

"You're in Invercargill though."

I hear that at least once a week, usually from someone in Auckland or the Waikato who has found what they want on our list and then done the geography. It is a fair thing to raise. There is a strait in the way and about 1,600km of road, and nobody wants to pay freight on 400 plants that turn up cooked.

So here is how the trip works, what it does to a plant, what the law says about sending stock into another region, and what to do with the pallet when it lands in your yard.

How long does a plant spend in transit from Southland?

Four to six working days to most North Island destinations, on general pallet freight.

Mainfreight does have express inter-island services at 48 hours between Invercargill and Wellington, Hamilton, and Auckland, and around 72 hours for other main-centers, but it does mean timing the shipment to catch those weekly services.

What costs the plant is the number of days it spends in the dark with no water. A plant on a wrapped pallet is in a cool, still, black box. It is not photosynthesising, it is not drinking, and the potting mix is drying from the top down the whole way. Three days of that is a nap. Ten days of that, sitting on a depot floor over a long weekend, is a problem.

So the day of the week you book on matters. Stock that leaves us on a Monday is on someone's site by Thursday. Stock that leaves on a Thursday can sit in a depot until Monday.

What time of year should I book plant freight?

Autumn through spring, if you have the choice.

In most regions autumn is the best planting window anyway. The ground still holds summer heat, the air has cooled off, and the first light frosts knock the bugs about. Winter is fine too, including the middle of it. The plant is not trying to push top growth it cannot support, so a few days in a truck costs it very little.

Midsummer is the one to be careful with. A curtainsider parked in the sun at a depot gets hot, and heat plus dark plus no water is the combination that browns off soft new growth. If a summer delivery is unavoidable, order a bigger grade so there is more moisture in the pot to start with, and have someone at the other end who will water the pallet the day it arrives rather than the day they get around to it.

Why did my kowhai arrive with no leaves on it?

Because it is August, and that is what kowhai does.

Sophora microphylla is hemideciduous. It sheds its leaves just before it flowers, so in August and September you get bare branches, then gold. A South Island kowhai turning up on a Northland site looking like a bundle of sticks has not died in the truck. It is doing exactly what it does in the ground here.

Same story with a few others in cold-country stock. Anemanthele lessoniana colours right down into copper and bronze over winter, which looks like death to anyone expecting the green it carries in December. Deciduous stock arrives as a stick with roots, and that is the correct look for a dormant plant.

The ones to worry about are limp, not bare. Soft growth that has gone dark and floppy, or a rootball that is dry to the middle of the pot, are the two things to photograph and ring us about the same day.

Which plants are awkward to freight, and what happens to them?

Three shapes cause most of the trouble, and each gets handled differently.

Tall single-stem stock. Juvenile lancewood, Pseudopanax crassifolius, is the obvious one. It runs as an unbranched stem for years, with rigid leathery leaves up to a metre long angled downwards off it. That form does not tuck into a standard pallet height and the leaves snap rather than bend. It travels standing up, spaced, and often on a shorter stack than the rest of the load, which is part of why tall stock costs more per plant to send.

Big arching grasses. Anemanthele makes a dense clump around 0.5 to 1m tall and 1 to 1.5m across at maturity, and the foliage is the whole point of the plant. Grasses can be trimmed by roughly half to travel tidily and to stop the load crushing them, but not cut to the ground.

Wide, soft-leaved shrubs. Anything with a broad canopy takes up freight space it does not pay for and bruises against the wrap. Smaller grades solve this at both ends: cheaper per plant, cheaper per pallet, and less damage in transit.

What are the rules about sending plants into another region?

There are two layers, and the second one catches people out.

Nationally, the National Pest Plant Accord lists more than 200 plants that cannot be sold, propagated or distributed anywhere in New Zealand. Everything on that list is an unwanted organism under the Biosecurity Act 1993.

Regionally, councils add their own. Auckland's Regional Pest Management Plan banned the propagation and sale of a further 55 plants through nurseries, garden centres, markets and florists from 1 September 2022, and Auckland Council inspectors check retail outlets against it. Agapanthus praecox cultivars are on that list, dwarf forms included, unless independently tested and shown to be low fertility. So a plant you can legally sell in Gore can be illegal to supply into Auckland.

If you are ordering across a regional boundary, check the receiving council's plan rather than ours. We will flag anything on our list we know is restricted where you are, but the obligation sits with whoever puts the plant in the ground as well as whoever grows it.

The other thing to ask any supplier is what their biosecurity system is. Plant Pass is New Zealand's nursery production standard for plant health and biosecurity, run by NZ Plant Producers Incorporated, established in 2021 under the Government Industry Agreement and launched the following year. The register lists certified producers publicly, and it now sits above 100 certified nurseries and nurseries working towards it.

Does Southland-grown stock suit a warmer place?

Mostly it turns up over-prepared, with one exception.

Our plants are grown outdoors in cold, wet conditions at the bottom of the country. Nothing is coddled through the winter, so what leaves here has already met worse weather than most of what waits for it up the line. Send that plant to Hamilton, where the inland frost pockets surprise people who assume the north is uniformly mild, and it shrugs. Send it to Wellington, where wind is the deciding factor rather than cold, and it has been leaning into a southerly since it was potted.

The exception is Auckland, Tauranga and Whangarei. In a mild humid climate with only a handful of frosts a year, nothing tests that hardening, so it stops being much of an argument. What still counts up there is the growing itself: the grade, the root system, whether the plant has been potted on at the right time. Not where it was hardened off.

What do I do when the pallet arrives?

Unwrap it the same day. That is the one that matters.

Cut the wrap off and get air moving through the stock. Water every pot through, properly, until it runs out the bottom, because the top 50mm being damp tells you nothing about the middle of the rootball.

Stand the plants somewhere sheltered rather than in full sun or full wind for the first day or two.

Count and check against the docket while the plants are out and visible, not after they are spread across a job.

Plant them out as soon as the site is ready. A plant in a pot on a windy pad dries out faster than the same plant in the ground.

If something has gone wrong in transit, photograph it on the pallet before anything is moved. Freight claims and grower credits both live or die on that photo.

Common questions

Do you have a minimum order for delivery?

No, we don’t have any minimum order – plenty of times we’ve sent out 1 plant!

Can I get an exact freight cost before I commit?

Yes. Freight is quoted on the actual pallet configuration, so we need the species, grades and quantities before the number means anything. Ask for it as a separate line on the quote rather than buried in a per-plant rate, so you can see what you are paying for the trip.

Can plants be sent by courier instead of pallet freight?

Yes absolutely, but once the order gets over about 30-40 plants (in 2.5L grade) courier starts getting very expensive.

Who is liable if the plants arrive damaged?

It depends on where it went wrong, so photograph the pallet before you unstack it. Ring us the day it lands. A claim raised inside 24 hours with pictures is a straightforward conversation, and one raised a fortnight later after the plants have been sitting on a site is not.

Can you hold an order and send it when my site is ready?

No problems. Typically this will require at least a deposit if not full pre-payment, and depending on the size of the order lead times of 12-18 months are not uncommon.

Do you deliver to Stewart Island or the Chatham Islands?

Yes sure, usually it’s most cost effective for us to deliver to the mainland shipping depot, and can go on your preferred carrier from there.

Get the timing, the grade and the first day at the other end right, and 1,600km costs a plant very little. The rest of it is paperwork and a truck.

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