About The Boundary Co.

The idea started a few years ago, after I saw an old boundary map hanging on the wall at my uncle's farm. It stuck with me for quite a while before I actually did anything about it.

It wasn't until I got back to New Zealand after a stint working in the UK, between jobs, that I actually sat down and looked into it properly — researching New Zealand's early pastoral runs and hand-drawing them from the original historical records. I'd never really been much of a drawer, but I've always had an eye for detail, so I picked up a pencil and had a go. The first map took me nearly four days to finish.

That eye for detail carries over from my day job in precision agriculture and farm mapping — it's a bit of a funny overlap, really, mapping land all week through data and technology, then spending the weekend mapping it again but with a pencil and pen instead of GPS. Fitting it in around the day job is a bit of a juggle — work has me away from home in Wanaka more often than not — but it works out, largely thanks to my fiancée Zoe. She keeps the ordering side running while I'm on the road, and also handles all the neat lettering on the maps, since my handwriting's nowhere near tidy enough.

New Zealand's farming history doesn't get talked about much, and I reckon that's a shame. Turning wild New Zealand into some of the best farmland in the world was a massive effort, and a lot of that story's sitting quietly in old boundary lines and books that hardly anyone looks at anymore. That's really what the print collection's about — giving that history somewhere to actually be seen.

We hope you enjoy our maps!

Tom

A man with a wide-brimmed hat and sleeveless shirt smiling and leaning out of an old, rusty tractor with a black and tan dog sitting inside. The background shows an open field and a blue sky.
Two smiling young adults walking in a plowed field with trees and a cloudy sky in the background.
A smiling woman with sunglasses resting on her head, wearing a green and white striped t-shirt, sitting outdoors at a wooden table during daytime. In the background, there are people socializing, potted plants, a large umbrella, trees, and a building with a chimney under a blue sky with some clouds.
A row of hardcover books with colorful covers on a wooden shelf.