MEET THE MAKER
At Kinnettles Tea Garden in Angus, Susie Walker-Munro has overcome the challenges of the local climate to grow Scottish tea, both on her own and with a collective of growers
If they can grow tea in England, why not Scotland? So pondered Susie Walker-Munro after hearing about Cornwall’s Tregothnan Estate. An idea took root, but her plan wouldn’t be without challenges — not least Scotland’s short growing season and harsh winters.
The story begins in 2007 with the arrival of the first cuttings from Cornwall. Susie’s aim was to diversify her offering at Kinnettles Farm, in the Valley of Strathmore, Angus, by producing a high-end crop. “It was never going to be a quick project,” she says. “It’s like planting an apple orchard — you aren’t going to make any money for at least seven years.”
It was a steep learning curve, and the first shrubs, planted in an exposed field, failed. The solution was to grow them using polytunnels plus a rich, liquid manure made from comfrey, nettles and dock leaves — “after plucking, you have to give back to the plants, as you’re taking about 5% of the leaves,” Susie explains.
The leaves, rolled on the farm, eventually became Kinnettles Gold, Susie’s single-estate tea, launched in 2015 through Pekoe Tea in Edinburgh. Encouraged, her next target was to grow Scottish tea from seeds, because the resulting plants have a longer life span than those from cuttings. But to make it viable, Susie needed to scale up. So, in 2016, she put feelers out and a collective of nine female growers was formed. Named Tea Gardens of Scotland, the endeavour encompasses mini plantations in abandoned walled gardens and farms across Angus, Perthshire, Fife and Kincardineshire, each with its own terroir. In the same year, Susie met Beverley Wainwright, a tea consultant at The Scottish Tea Factory in Comrie, Perthshire, who joined her on fact-finding trips to Sri Lanka, Japan, India and Nepal. They sourced coldtolerant seeds to propagate their own plants. “I can’t tell you how many we ki
