Congratulations to our groundsman Tawera Tito who's heading to London to take up the opportunity of a lifetime – joining the 2026 Wimbledon grounds team preparing the courts for one of the world’s most prestigious tennis events.

The team will be looking after 18 grass courts, 20 grass practice courts and eight American Clay courts.  Nine tonnes of grass seed is used each year, with all courts re-lined, rolled and mown daily. 

It’s a wonderful opportunity for Tawera, a keen tennis player and golfer, who began his career in sports turf just two years ago when he was introduced to Mexteds through Partners Porirua Trust Youth 2 Work programme.  Last year he began his Sports Turf apprenticeship with Primary ITO and was recently awarded his Level 3 certificate. When he returns to Mexteds in November, his main goal is to finish his Level 4 and become fully qualified.

Our hard working team have hit a huge milestone, completing the install of 11,500 metres of primary drains at Te Whiti Park over the last few weeks. 

Stage 1 of the  project is now complete and we are moving on to stage 2, where we'll be re-levelling the #1 League field and installing a new cricket blcok.

The work is part of an upgrade to three Hutt City Council parks this summer, beginning with 10,000 metres of primary drains installed before Christmas at Petone Rec, and to be followed by another 6,500 metres of primary drains at Wise Park, Wainuiomata.  

Our new Toro ProCore machine was a great success coring the greens at Karori Golf Course today, helping to improve aeration and drainage.
​Ideally the club would like to core the greens a couple of times over the wet winter months.
In this video we're using solid tines, essentially punching holes. The machine can also be fitted with hollow tines to remove plugs completely, which are then backfilled with sand.
​>>> Watch video of the ProCore in action

Transforming Ferrymead Park, one stitch at a time!

It's early morning starts for Mexteds' hybrid turf team who  are on site at Ferrymead Park, Christchurch for the next few weeks with our electric SISGrass stitching machine. We are creating a hybrid surface - 95% natural turf and 5% monofilament fibres. This technology, used on pitches, playing fields and golf courses around the world, improves turf durability and water penetration, speeding up turf recovery and improving playing conditions, as well as giving savings in maintenance costs.

Christchurch City Council's senior project manager, Richard Gibbs, says "Hybrid stitching is being implemented as part of our recently approved Sports Field Network Plan. This Plan includes an objective to use hybrid turf technology to maximise the use, resilience and longevity of new and existing natural turf sports fields to allow sport development and performance at a higher community level."

Mexteds supports the Sky Stadium Turf Team during  code changeovers, using two Fendt tractors and some precision driving to pull the  portable wicket drop in tray into the Stadium and line it up.

This tray swap was required for the White Ferns and Black Caps mid-week T20 games, before we removed the tray  again ahead of the weekend's Hurricanes v Warratahs super rugby clash.

​Game On!

Great results from our team of Chris Parkinson and Dale Sabbagh who were in Hawke's Bay recently renovating the clay surface at the Rodney Green Foundation Indoor Cricket Training Facility in Hastings.

Using our tractor-mounted groover and sweeper, Chris removed the organic matter and created a new seed bed before spreading and compacting a new layer of Patumahoe clay.  Dale was on the Graden scarifier, dealing with hard-to-reach spots and used our Campey pedestrian Aeraseeder to seed the topsoil run-up areas in between the two clay bays that we'd stitched last year with our SISGrass stitching machine.
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After a 10-12 week grow-in, the wickets will be all set for the upcoming winter training schedule for Central Districts Cricket Association's men's and women's teams.