A decade and a half ago, young and enthusiastic gardener Jonathan Jones noted that temperatures at the estate where he was employed were a few degrees above those to be found in the tea plantation-rich area of Darjeeling, India. This got him experimenting with the idea of turning part of the property to similar pursuits. This past season, over a ton of tea was produced from the plantation in the extreme southwest of England.
Since 1335 Tregothnan has belonged to the Boscawan family, and the Tregothnan Estate Botanic Garden, southeast of Truro, Cornwall, was a well established and much admired tourist attraction. Tea bushes have long been raised in England as ornamentals, as Jones well knew when he joined the estate in 1996. He collected samples from such specimens, and then travelled through the world’s tea-growing regions similarly selecting suitable cultivars.
Back in Tregothnan, an initial 30 acres were established as Britain’s first tea plantation. A similar acreage followed following the initial successful plucking in the spring of 2005. This produced 50 kilograms of ‘Single Estate’ that sold at Fortnum & Mason’s tony outlet in London for £28 per 50 grams. In 2010, some of the crop had been shipped to India, China and Japan, according to the BBC. A tea bar opened on the estate this year.
There have been problems. While the plantation remains free of insects that plague the crop elsewhere, rabbits, deer and pheasants have been a problem, wrote Jane Pettigrew in Tea & Coffee Trade Journal (1 December 2006).
If it can happen in a milder part England, can we soon hope for at least modest Camellia sinensis plantations to be flourishing on southern Vancouver Island and the adjacent Lower B.C. Mainland? Perhaps Victoria’s famed Empress Hotel will be able to offer a nice cup of genuine Canadian tea . . .
Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.
