Plantations

We visited the only working tea plantation in North America. Currently owned by Bigelow Tea, it is located on Johns Island, one of the necklace of islands surrounding Charleston. I guess I never really thought much about it, but a tea bush looks nothing like I would have thought. It looks like any generic shrub. Only the new growth is harvested to make the tea, so they have a machine created specifically for that purpose. It is driven down the rows of plants and any new growth shooting up from the top is cut off and collected in the bin at the rear.

Aside from growing and harvesting the tea there, they also process it. We toured the factory and learned how tea goes from a freshly harvested leaf, to the final product, all within about a 24 hour period, with black, oolong and green tea all coming from the same plant. Very interesting.



From there we drove about 10 miles north to the Magnolia Plantation along the Ashley river, which grew rice in pre-civil war days. The owner at that time, John Grimke Drayton, an Episcopal minister, became an avid gardener when he was advised to spend more time outside for his health. The grounds of the plantation are famous for their extensive gardens. We spent about two hours walking the beautiful grounds. Unfortunately, our timing was off. While the azaleas, hydrangeas, magnolias and some lilys were blooming, there are also hundreds of camelia bushes throughout the gardens and they were past their prime. I can only imagine how spectacular the gardens must look when they are blooming.



Also open for tours is the plantation house. I was eager to see it until I found out it was actually the third house on the grounds. While the story of the house is interesting, it is not the 300 year old house I was hoping to see. The original house was destroyed by a lightening strike and the second was burned when the union soldiers came through the area during the civil war. This third house was originally a cottage located further up the river. After returning to the plantation at the end of the civil war, John Drayton dismantled it, floated it down the river and rebuilt it on the foundation of the old house. It was added to over the years and generations of the family continued to live in it until about 1975.