Matakana Botanicals

A New Zealand family company, based on an eco farm in Matakana north of Auckland. It was founded in 1988 as Les Floralies by Colyn Devereux, and her son Danvers Devereux runs it now.

Danvers bought the farm in 2014, turned it into the company's home and relaunched the brand as Matakana Botanicals. He still oversees the growing and sourcing as well as the products.

Yes. Great Barrier Island Bee Co is one of the Matakana Botanicals ranges, not a separate brand. It covers Manuka Honey 1880, the Island Flowers range of Hibiscus & Lime, Kowhai & Vanilla and Pohutukawa & Paw Paw, and the SPF30 lip balms.

The name is a nod to Great Barrier Island, where New Zealand's first commercial beekeeping began in 1880 and where the manuka honey and manuka oil are wild harvested.

Start with the job rather than the scent. Gardeners is for hands that do real work, built around manuka oil. Cucumber & Mint is the shower range, shampoo, conditioner and body wash in one scent. Macadamia & Wild Fig and Lime & Kawakawa are the everyday hand and body ranges.

Manuka Honey 1880 is the richest, with a body butter and an intensive hand and nail cream. The Island Flowers three are lighter and more floral. Apothecary is not body care at all: the sniff boxes are aromatherapy and the Sleep range is for the half hour before bed.

Four, and all of them are New Zealand grown or harvested. Extra virgin olive oil and macadamia oil from the Matakana region. Manuka honey and manuka oil wild harvested on Great Barrier Island. Lavender grown and cut on the farm at Matakana.

Macadamia oil is the one worth knowing about: it is high in monounsaturated fatty acids, and among plant oils its pH sits closest to skin, which is why it goes on so easily.

Each box holds 8g of aroma beads infused with an essential oil blend, made by Mary Wakefield, one of New Zealand's foremost qualified aromatherapists. You open the box, take a few slow breaths and close it again.

There are five: Sleep with lavender, chamomile and neroli. De Stress with lavender, ylang ylang and marjoram. Recovery with rose, marjoram and olibanum. Energise with cedarwood, eucalyptus and pine. Focus with bergamot, lemon and cinnamon. Nothing to spray, nothing to spill, and small enough for a handbag or a desk drawer.

Gardeners, which has been made for that since 1988. It is built on manuka oil from Great Barrier Island with manuka honey, olive oil and macadamia oil, and scented with lemongrass, orange and rosemary.

The three pieces that do the work are the 425ml hand and body lotion, the 425ml refreshing hand wash and the nourishing hand cream, which comes as a 150ml tube or a 100g pot. If hands are cracked rather than just dry, the intensive hand balm is the heavier one.

The bundles, because they show the range off rather than one bottle of it. The sniff box collection covers all five blends for someone whose taste you do not know. The Sleep trio is the same idea for a bedside table.

For someone who gardens, cooks or is on their hands all day, the Gardeners trio is the obvious one. The brand's own boxed gift sets pair two pumps or a pump and a tube, and the Travel Treats and Kiwi Collection are four 30ml tubes, which travel well.

Yes. The products are made here and the hero ingredients are grown or harvested here, in Matakana and on Great Barrier Island.

The company has also supplied the Apothecary Sleep range to Emirates First Class for more than fifteen years, and the Cucumber & Mint range runs through the Scenic and Heartland hotel groups across New Zealand and the Pacific.

For Lime & Kawakawa, yes. The hand and body wash comes as a 1000ml refill, which fills the 360ml pump nearly three times over and costs less per millilitre than replacing the bottle.

The other ranges are pump and tube only at the moment. If a refill matters to you, tell us and we will raise it with them.