Logie Tea Garden, Fife

Not currently open to the public

Our small tea garden is situated in the hilly terrain of north Fife close to St Andrews.

We are at the very early stage of setting up the tea garden and have recently started planting some tea bushes outside to face the elements. At 350ft above sea level and a few miles from the North Sea it is impossible to avoid the winds. Our particular micro climate is testing the limits of tea growing in Scotland.

Grown from seed in Fife

We have grown our tea plants on site from seeds selected for their cold tolerance from Nepal and Georgia, planting over 4000 seeds and growing them on over the last three years.

After a series of setbacks - including a great many losses in the winter of 2018 when we discovered that tea plants mind a desiccating easterly wind much more than snow and freezing temperatures - we moved the garden to a much more sheltered position.

Our tea plants are now only planted out - typically at 2-3 years of age - when they are sufficiently woody to withstand the weather.

Trial planting

In its new location our tea garden consists of an initial 200 plants (all planted in summer 2019). These will be closely monitored during the winter of 2019/20 to see how they perform before we plant out the remaining 1000 plants currently being grown in the polytunnel.

100% Natural Scottish Tea

Our tea plants are grown completely naturally and we do not use any pesticides or herbicides.

While waiting for the plants to mature we are planning to start making small experimental batches of tea to see which kinds of tea best suit our crop.