Forest Tea Gardens

Banzhang Tea Gardens lay right inside a natural forest area in the western parts of Xishuangbanna, a small autonomous prefecture of Yunnan province. Thanks to its sheltered location and because of the regular warm and humid air masses of the monsoon pushing up the Mekong valley from May until October, fantastic tropical forests can still be found in the region.

In Banzhang tea has been under cultivation in unique traditional forest tea gardens, sometimes also called 'wild teagardens', since 1845. The young tea is planted right under the shadow of the natural forests around the village. Tea plants are raised to become proper small trees of about 3 to 4 meters height. Today most of the Banzhang tea trees have reached ages of about 100 years. There are quite a few trees which are over 150 years in age and reaching top heights of 7 meters. The village forest and the tea trees are forming a multi-layered forest belt enclosing the entire village. This forest is not only providing valuable tea leaves, and it is not only protecting the village's water and soil resources, it also greatly contributes to the aesthetics of a marvellous and unique landscape.

Banzhang forest teagardens certainly are among those very few examples of ecosystem-based natural forest management, which really are functioning. In Banzhang all necessary management activities are well adapted to the structures and processes of natural forest stands. Thanks to this very sensitive action the forest ecosystem with all of its complex values has been preserved in the Banzhang area - until today.

Each family of Banzhang village is raising and harvesting their own tea trees, while the actual forest trees are belonging to everybody in the village, standing under communal management and protection. Any important management decision is based on collective agreement under the leadership of the elected village committee.

In Banzhang tea still gets cultivated very close to its native natural environment. Virgin mountain forests of this particular region where the native habitat of the wild tea plant (Camellia sinensis) some 3000 years ago. It was here, in the south-western corner of Yunnan, that tea leaves first were found to be of some use as a medicine by local forest dwellers. Only a little later those wild leaves became even more famous as the sole ingredient of a tasty and refreshing hot drink.

This rare natural type of tea cultivation has no demand for neither herbicide nor pesticide nor for artificial fertilisers. Different from ordinary hedgerow plantations, forest tea gardens are very complex cultivation systems. Populations of pests or fungi will not develop to harmful extents, since they are controlled by their natural antagonists. The permanent tree cover provides for sufficient nutrients input. The farmers of Banzhang are well aware of such ecological interactions, and they intelligently are making use of them.