The camomile lawn that will make a million cups of tea...
IT’S a sea of yellow amid rolling English countryside and provides quite a view – or should that be brew?
This field is actually a camomile tea plantation which is expected to reap a bumper harvest – enough for a million cuppas, in fact – because of this summer’s heatwave.
It’s the biggest ever crop of the soothing plant at the UK’s only tea plantation, on the Tregothnan estate, near Tresillian, Cornwall. Tregothnan’s Bella Percy-Hughes, 36, said the plantation in the estate’s 700-year-old gardens had prospered thanks to the UK’s ‘mini-Mediterranean’ summer.
She explained: ‘Normally it’s grown in the Mediterranean but because we’ve had such a hot climate camomile production has increased significantly.
‘It’s the largest amount of camomile ever harvested in the UK for tea production. The crop is being harvested now and then it will be dried in big hot boxes before it is made into tea. When we’re finished we’ll have enough for about a million cups. It’s really exciting for us.’
Tea has been grown at the estate since 1999, and was first harvested in 2005. Staff there began harvesting camomile in 2006.
Camomile, which has been taken as a tea since ancient Egyptian times, is believed to have a soothing effect and help ease sleep problems, anxiety and stomach ache.