This selection from Donnie Barrett of Fairhope Tea Plantation has small, medium green leaves with pronounced serration. Vigorous growth produces lots of shoots for harvest! Prolific flowers and seed set, and quite cold hardy. Lipton Tea Company started a tea research project at Fairhope but after 4 years the plants were bulldozed and burned. Donnie Barrett saved 3 plants and propagated many from these. Fairhope Select is one of these selections. Camellia sinensis likes lots of water but will not grow where water will stand. The second year the plants are established and starting to grow vigorously, it’s time to prune them off short again. This is what needs to be done to start the plant branching out. The plant would otherwise shoot up tall and straight into a twenty foot shrub, but for tea production the bush needs to look more like an azalea bush. Plants produce more robust teas when grown in full sun but young plants planted in direct sun will not survive. It’s best to protect the plants from direct sun the first full year. See here for a fuller description. Hardy to Zones 7a-9. Photo courtesy of Camellia Forest Nursery.
Camellia sinensis ‘Fairhope Select’ Tea
Description
This selection from Donnie Barrett of Fairhope Tea Plantation has small, medium green leaves with pronounced serration. Vigorous growth produces lots of shoots for harvest! Prolific flowers and seed set, and quite cold hardy. Lipton Tea Company started a tea research project at Fairhope but after 4 years the plants were bulldozed and burned. Donnie Barrett saved 3 plants and propagated many from these. Fairhope Select is one of these selections. Camellia sinensis likes lots of water but will not grow where water will stand. The second year the plants are established and starting to grow vigorously, it’s time to prune them off short again. This is what needs to be done to start the plant branching out. The plant would otherwise shoot up tall and straight into a twenty foot shrub, but for tea production the bush needs to look more like an azalea bush. Plants produce more robust teas when grown in full sun but young plants planted in direct sun will not survive. It’s best to protect the plants from direct sun the first full year. See here for a fuller description. Hardy to Zones 7a-9. Photo courtesy of Camellia Forest Nursery.
