Shade Garden Nursery for Tea Plants

Now where will this first flush of 2,000+ tea plants live for the next year? Tea plants are tender in their first year of growth and if propagated from seed are establishing their tap root. Our greenhouse gets too much sun for tender plants. We could use a 50% shade cloth but that might prove a bit challenging.

The north fenced in garden may be best. It is shaded much of the day, has an easily accessible water source and is fenced in protecting it from most animals. Most. 

Groundhogs or woodchucks love feasting on tender plants. We have issues with them before. The fencing in this garden have 4”x4” openings. What to do?

​First we raked the area to provide a smoother ground surface. Then unrolled 4’ wide (choose a width that works best for your situation), closely woven wire (we used chicken wire) along the perimeter of the fence including 6” vertically of the fence.

Next we used 4’ wide (again use whatever width works best for your property), woven agricultural fabric (UV rated, 10+ year etc) over the chicken wire. The woven fabric was laid so that it covered 6” vertically the fence. We lay 2 rows of fabric, overlaping 6” of the previously laid fabric. One could use landscape staples to secure the fabric to the ground, but we will use the weight of the potted plants.

After the chicken wire and woven landscape fabric were laid, we installed used wooden pallets (obtained free from the local home improvement store), positioned so the slats were vertical and ziptied them to the existing fence.

Now we starting moving the potted tea plants to the newly altered space. We will add more landscape fabric down only  as needed for more potted plants.