Tearoom owner plants seeds for a new wave

Terri Thomas is sowing seeds in her garden, one cup of tea at a time.

Earlier this year Thomas opened the Telegraph Tea Room in Melvern Square. Some might say that opening an English tearoom in an out-of-the-way place during the bleak month of February is a risky venture, especially if it’s done in the heart of an economic recession.

“Who doesn’t need a bit of jolly in such a dark month?” she suggested at the time. Seven months later, the tearoom now hosts a garden school and has matured into a bustling spot, a favorite gathering place for tea lovers and gardeners.

The upstairs has been transformed into a spacious loft, where people from different places can meet in peace and mutual goodwill. Twice a week, a Kripalu yoga class rolls out its mats in loft; and once a month the Religious Society of Friends, a group of Quakers, meet there.

On the retail side, Thomas is now offering a dazzling assortment of reasonably priced Fair Trade items from around the world; an array of brightly coloured silk scarves and blouses; jewelry, purses, and soft furnishings can be found above the stairs.

Each item is a unique handmade creation, often fashioned from previously discarded materials.

“In Calcutta, families pick up plastic bags for money,” she said. “All these brightly coloured plastic bags are just blowing around the streets. They gather them up and make purses. Buying these beautiful things is a direct way for people here to help the people there.”

The idea of turning something that had been wasted into something positive to help others is an idea that seems to inspire Thomas. Her plan is to bring things from around the world to the Annapolis Valley, and offer us a place to exercise an ethical purchasing power. People can double-up their gifting power, knowing they are buying quality items and helping to improve the lives of women and children in the Third World, she said.

“If the people in Afghanistan had a means of making a living, they wouldn’t be growing opium for the Taliban,” she said. “And there would be no war for us to fight.”

She added that one of the images she can’t shake came from a documentary she once watched. A three-year old child was stirring a pot of melting rubber in a small hut. The toxic concoction was to be turned into the cheap flip-flops that we casually slip on our feet each summer and then discard.

“For every cheap thing in the world we can buy, some poor person suffered to produce it,” she said. “Whenever I think about bringing home something that was made by someone in a factory in China; I always ask myself, do I really want to bring the product of that person’s suffering into my house?”

If Thomas sounds disappointed by the commonplace attitude that says it’s okay to exploit people for profit, it’s only the Quaker showing. She doesn’t make much money off the Fair Trade items, but she says it’s an ethical sideline of goodies she can offer people who visit this off-the-beaten-path tearoom and its garden.

“The tearoom is the bread and butter for the garden,” she said. “Every cup of tea I sell pays for my seeds.”

Over the past several months Thomas has been bringing in seeds for a special garden she’s cultivating. Back in England, she worked as a horticulturalist and she’s now working on a design called New Perennial Planting Wave, a new concept to the area.

The plan is to use native plants and create a natural retreat. Unlike traditional plans that work around colour, this garden starts with structure, form, and texture and then chooses colors.

“It’s not plunk planting,” she said. “That doesn’t tell a story. This garden will tell a story.”

England’s winter is too mild for this, she said only the cold climate here can push the plants to reach their greatest potential.

If these plants don’t rest, they’ll burn themselves out by blooming all the time, she explained. The garden will remind us about the beauty of nature and it will unfold gracefully without anyone forcing it.

“These plants will be just as remarkable in their deaths as they are in life,” she said. “Every season will tell it’s own story.”

The notion of planting a garden that goes to sleep in the winter is ironic, given that one of Thomas’s most memorable jobs was helping to wake up one of England’s most famous Victorian gardens. She was one of horticulturists brought in to restore the Lost Gardens of Heligan, in Cornwall.

“It was a garden that went to sleep for nearly 100 years,” she said. Once a family estate with a spectacular Victorian garden tended by 22 gardeners, it fell to ruin in the years following the First World War.

In 1914, all 22 of Heligan’s gardeners enlisted for military service. Two years later, only six of these men returned from Flanders. After a few decades, the once spectacular grounds began to decay from neglect. Following a devastating hurricane in 1990, a trust was set up to rejuvenate the grounds. Because nothing had been done to gardens in years, it was as if it all just fell asleep, she added.

The best horticulturists were hired to bring the garden back to life. Each worked on a section, gradually restoring its original splendor, pulling one weed at a time. At the end of the project, Thomas found she was searching for another grand project, something worth doing.

Philip McMillan Browse, the chief horticulturist, told her there were only two things she could do; she could either start her own garden, or write a book about it.

“I like to get down and dirty, I’m a doer,” she said. Her garden spans about 3 acres and will offer a series of walkways. Thomas expects the first phase will mature in about three years. In starting the seedlings here, the plants will easily adapt to their new environment.

“Seeds are like children, they won’t question where they are planted. They’ll just make their roots here and grow.”

For more information on The Telegraph Tea Room and Garden School, visit the Facebook page; or visit the tearoom at 127 Bridge St., in Melvern Square.