Susie Munro

Kinnettles Tea Garden

Andrew Gardner was introduced to me in Nepal in Oct 2018 when I was looking to see if I could bring cold tolerant tea seed into Scotland from Nepal.  He invited us to join him at Everest Tea Estate which he was managing.  He had built a new  tea factory for the estate and was producing stunning teas.  It was an incredible day discussing machinery for small scale production, walking around the tea estate and smelling the oxidising teas.  Everything in the factory was either Andrews design like the withering troughs or imported specifically to make the very special teas that he produces.  We watched the ladies hand rolling leaf and the tea equipment in continuous use.  His knowledge is deep and his kindness and advice were so very welcome.  It was a no brainer that we would ask if he would consider possibly coming to Scotland to advise us on our tea growing project.

Roll forward 5 months to March 2019 and Andrew and his wife Anu arrived into Edinburgh.  They embarked on an exhausting program of visiting most of the Tea Gardens of Scotland gardens in our group, and spending quite a bit of time helping us at Kinnettles Tea Garden.  We had plants that were 8 year olds badly in need of pruning so Andrew showed us how to do a light prune (which is anything but, and the bushy plant is reduced to a few sticks that you simply can not believe will ever come back - but we know they do now!)   He cleaned up the plants and cut out cross branches, reinvigorated them and the pruning lesson could never have been learnt from a text book as these plants had never been centered out.  (When planted there was no advice available so I had simply plonked them in the ground).  Now they are fine hedges with a lovely table top for plucking!

We also worked on centering out our plants in our acre of walled garden.  There was not the opportunity to make tea together, due to Scotland still being so cold and the tea plants dormant.  There was still some snow on the ground - but the joy of being able to discuss my tea making experiments, and taste them with Andrew offering suggestions as to what I could do to tweak was so invaluable.  One of the wonderful things about Andrew visiting us was that I finally learned to love my tea plants and stop being stressed by them and the volume of work!

In 2020 Andrew sent us beautiful seed from Guranse Tea Garden that he also works with and kindly sent us more than we had ordered!  We are enjoying the benefits of this now as any plants not transplanted from seed beds and sold through our horticultural business, we are now plucking as the glasshouses they are housed in went down to minus 7 over the winter, and with all the refracted light, lend themselves to interesting teas.  The extra leaf from all these seeds has allowed a huge opportunity for us to experiment, and thanks to Andrew have the confidence to expanded.  We now have a Japanese Roller and other equipment to support our tea making.

Finally, Andrew is firmly in favour of organic, and letting nature work with the tea plant.  His composting techniques, his natural remedy’s to heal a damaged plant, his instinct for planting distances in relation to topography, wind, aspect, along with his encouragement of our system here of liquid manures is very enabling.  Other fresh ideas from his experiences in Nepal have then been added into the mix of things that we do here at Kinnettles.  Meeting Andrew is a formative experience in my immersion in the world of tea - since 2007, there has been floundering, and having met Andrew, feel I am in my comfortable place growing the plants the way I want.

We are longing to have Andrew back to visit us and currently the covid situation has thwarted us, but we are looking forward to the possibility of travel opening up and being able to make and create wonderful teas with Andrew here in Scotland.

Rebecca and Roland Rutgers

BlueGreens Nepal Tea

Our acquaintance and friendship with Andrew goes back 12 years when we started our tea importing company specialising in Nepali teas. 

We kept returning to teas from the estate he was in charge of because what Andrew made stood out well above anything else that was available, even the more expensive teas made by the young and ambitious garden next door. 

The acquaintance steadily grew into an unabashed partiality as we came to know Andrew as an absolute expert on making teas and an artist in the way he loved his profession, continuously inventing new methods of creating sublime teas. We found that we could request specialty teas to be made with a certain character and he would do that for us. His knowledge and understanding of the tea clones and all the aspects that influence the character and flavour of a tea is truly astounding, from the weather, climate and ecological conditions to every stage and detail of the picking and processing of each variety of tea bush. And what kept making this even more amazing was Andrew’s knowledge of and determination to only use organic methods of care and treatment of the tea bushes.

Besides all this, Andrew combines a pioneering and visionary personality with integrity in doing business, and with both leadership and management skills in running a tea garden and factory. We have been witnesses to his strong sense of righteousness and compassion which make him a fearless defender of the staff and their interests and dues.

The partiality, however, inevitably grew into a friendship starting from the moment we got to be guests at the estate where Andrew was then working, and enjoyed the warm hospitality and friendly company Andrew and his wife Anu offered us.

The friendship has deepened through the years as we shared experiences and increased both the joy of doing business together, and the appreciation of Andrew’s knowledge, understanding and personal approach to doing tea!

Shingo Magome

Magome Co., Ltd

I keep buying Andrew san's teas because the teas are very high quality and it’s tastes are unique and different from other Tea Garden’s.

I really like his teas and there are no really similar alternative teas! I will continue to buy the tea he makes.