The Farm and the People

One mountain garden in Enshi, and the families who work it.

Flowit Garden

Our tea grows at Flowit Garden, up in Wildbrook Village in Enshi, Hubei. It sits at about 1,100 meters, on soil that is naturally rich in selenium, which is rare and part of why the tea here tastes the way it does. The mountain is cool and misty, so the tea grows slowly and keeps its sweetness. We farm it organically, no synthetic sprays and no chemical fertilizer, and we weed it by hand.

The garden runs on the seasons. Early spring is for the green tea, when we pick the first tender buds for Enshi Yulu. As the year turns we make white tea, black tea, and a few things we're still experimenting with. Every batch is small, and every batch passes through our own hands here on the mountain.

June, who makes the tea

I'm June. I grow and make the tea, and I learned the craft the long way, training under two national-level tea masters and working alongside the senior tea brothers I came up with. Enshi Yulu is one of the oldest steamed green teas in China, and few people still shape it by hand. I'm one of the ones who does, and I'm still learning every season. When you buy from us, you're buying from the person who actually made your tea.

The families who grow it

We're a cooperative, not a company. Eight farming families here on the mountain, seven of them led by women. We grow and sell the tea together, and we share what it earns based on how much each family brings in. Before this, most of them made almost nothing from their own leaf. Now the money the tea earns overseas comes back up the mountain, to the hands that grew it. These are the people behind every tin.

Come and see it

The garden isn't only a place tea comes from. Now and then someone on a gap year, or just needing to step out of their own life for a while, comes up to the village and stays with us. They rest, they help with the tea, they meet a friend or two, and then they head on. If that sounds like something you need, there's room for you here too.