Christine Parks and her family have jointly inherited and operated the Camellia Forest Tea Gardens for two generations. The tea plantation is located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, and has been developed for over forty years, from camellia flowers to tea tree cultivation and processing. Christine collaborated with tea enthusiast Susan Walcott to publish the tea book “Growing Your Own Tea: The Complete Guide to Cultivating, Harvesting, and Preparing,” which became a must read for American family gardens and small-scale tea farmers.
Christine is a professional scientist specializing in health research, while her husband is a Camellia expert. His Chinese American family was the first to open and operate a camellia breeding nursery, gradually developing into the leading camellia retailer on the East Coast of the United States. Over the years, Christine became interested in tea tree cultivation, collecting tea tree varieties, planting and harvesting processed tea leaves. Her gardens has now developed to an area of 3 hectares, including greenhouses. She has multiple varieties from China, Japan, Hawaii, and many other regions that are suitable for planting these tea tree varieties in the United States.
Although several large-scale tea gardens in the United States choose mechanized harvesting, Christine insists on manual harvesting. Although the quantity is small, she focuses on producing high-quality tea, mainly white tea, green tea, black tea, and blended floral tea. In the first harvest and processing in 2025, her tea plantation produced approximately 4.5 kilograms of tea, and the annual output of the tea plantation is increasing. Christine mentioned that Chinese tea has a long history, rich tea varieties, and high tea quality. She wants to study in China to learn more about the sensory evaluation and tea making techniques of Chinese tea. Although her homemade tea has received high praise, she hopes to improve her tea making skills through more learning and participation in tea competitions. If Chinese tea experts visit the United States, Christine welcomes everyone to come and exchange ideas.
Christine’s tea plantation is very popular, and visitors can come to visit and enjoy tea, experience the life of tea farmers, and also pick and participate in tea processing. Christine also provides technical support for farmers who want to learn tea tree planting and tea processing. She enjoys sharing her own planting knowledge with gardeners and tea enthusiasts. To provide more reading resources for learning about planting and tea processing, Christine collaborated with tea enthusiast Susan Walcott to publish the tea book “Grow Your Own Tea: The Complete Guide to Cultivating, Harvesting, and Preparing”, which has become a must read for American family gardens and small-scale tea farmers.
This book is a comprehensive guide to tea tree cultivation and processing. It first briefly introduces the history and geographical distribution of tea, and then outlines contemporary tea farmers in North America and the British Isles. After introducing the botany of tea trees to enthusiastic planting enthusiasts and novice tea garden developers, the book delves into the practical operations of establishing a new tea garden, including early garden selection and planning, procurement and seedling cultivation, planting, tea garden management and maintenance, harvesting and processing, as well as planting tea trees in potted plants and other special situations.
