Hydrophil™ – Root Zone Matrix

Build a better root zone for water, nutrients and soil life.

Hydrophil™ is a concentrated soil amendment designed to improve the physical and chemical structure of the root zone — particularly in poor, sandy soils.

Its blend of biochar, spongolite and kaolin clay introduces porous carbon and fine mineral surfaces into soils that naturally have very little capacity to hold onto water or nutrients.

Together, these ingredients help create a more functional root-zone environment: one that can hold moisture, retain plant nutrients and provide habitat for beneficial microbial life.

Rather than acting primarily as a fertiliser, Hydrophil helps improve the soil environment in which roots, microbes, water and nutrients interact.

Building the root-zone matrix

Very sandy soils have large pore spaces and relatively little surface area to hold water and dissolved nutrients. Water moves through them quickly, and nutrients can readily be lost from the active root zone.

Hydrophil adds materials with very different physical properties.

Kaolin clay contributes extremely fine mineral particles and additional nutrient-holding surfaces.

Biochar provides a highly porous carbon structure capable of holding water and nutrients while creating protected microsites that can be colonised by soil organisms.

Spongolite adds further porous mineral structure, increasing the diversity of surfaces and pore spaces within the amended soil.

Together they create what we think of as a root-zone matrix — a more complex physical environment capable of supporting the processes healthy soil depends upon.

What Hydrophil helps do

• Hold water within the active root zone

• Help dry and water-repellent soils wet more effectively

• Increase the soil's capacity to retain nutrient ions

• Add mineral and carbon surfaces involved in cation exchange and nutrient availability

• Provide porous habitat and microsites for beneficial soil microorganisms

• Improve the structure and complexity of very sandy soils

• Reduce the tendency for water and nutrients to simply pass through the root zone

Hydrophil doesn't replace compost, fertiliser or living soil biology. Instead, it helps establish the structural environment those things can work within.

What's in Hydrophil?

Biochar · Spongolite · Kaolin clay · Wetting agent

The ingredients have been selected to perform complementary roles within the soil — water holding, nutrient retention, mineral exchange, porosity and microbial habitat.

How to use

Hydrophil is a concentrated root-zone amendment designed to be mixed through the soil around a new planting.

For a forestry tube or similar small native plant, mix approximately 1 level tablespoon (15 mL) thoroughly through the soil being returned around the roots.

For a typical 140 mm pot, use approximately 3 level tablespoons.

Mix Hydrophil evenly through the backfill rather than placing it in a concentrated layer beneath or directly against the root ball.

A 1 L pack provides approximately 65 forestry-tube plantings, or around 20–30 larger 140 mm plantings, depending on the amount used.

Rewild below ground

Planting is only half the story.

Healthy ecosystems depend on what happens beneath the surface — where roots, minerals, carbon, water, nutrients, fungi, bacteria and countless other organisms interact.

Hydrophil helps rebuild some of that below-ground structure, turning simple sandy soil into a more complex and hospitable root environment.

1 L concentrated root-zone amendment