Garden designer Kate Frey has won a gold medal from the Royal Horticultural Society at The Chelsea Flower Show in May 2005. The Fetzer Wine Garden aims to inspire gardeners with its diversity of wild flowers and cover crops and the positive organic message that they bring – enriching the soil and providing a habitat for beneficial insects and bird life.

There is no doubt that Kate’s success in garden design is due in no small part to the gardening projects she has created at Fetzer Vineyards, where she has transformed five acres of unpromising wasteland into a lush organic garden. She has taken inspiration for the Fetzer Wine Garden from Fetzer’s Vineyards and Gardens in the surrounding area of Mendocino County to create a diversified, self-sustaining garden and agricultural system.

The most striking and original feature in the garden is an authentic observation tower inspired by the observation towers used by the Fetzer winemakers to survey the condition of the vines, situated in their organic vineyards in Mendocino, California.

Kate, who won a silver-gilt medal during her first appearance at the show in 2003, particularly hopes to emphasize the importance of observation - the more you study and watch what goes on in the garden, the way the sun moves across it and how the plants grow - the more you can work with what you have.

The main structure of the tower is made from reclaimed old growth redwood, cut nearly 100 years ago. The base is stone clad, crafted from reclaimed sandstone.

The tower is 18 feet tall and the platform on which one stands is five feet off the ground. The tower is covered with Bobby James and Goldfinch roses to give it a natural appearance. A bat house sits on a post in the tower.

Ben Frey has built the tower with the help of Phil Game from Pure Folly in Cambridgeshire. A traditional Californian fire ring is used for building a fire to heat up lunch or make tea for the workers on the vineyards.

The willow fence has been woven in by Baz Scampion from Burnham Willow, Norfolk , a specialist in natural fencing and erosion control. Baz has used a weaving technique known as a slew, to weave 22 meters of fencing for the two boundary walls of the garden. He has used nine different colours including Salix viminalis and Salix alba vitalina grown in his home county which will give a range of colours from dark green through to light golden yellow.

Kate favours a naturalistic look and has therefore created a wildflower meadow at the front of the garden, stocked with mostly British native wildflowers. Each plant has a different purpose, all working together to create an organic haven.

The wetland area has a pond planted with bog plants such as marsh marigold, creeping Jenny and greater spearwort. The vegetable patch has vegetables such as carrots, beet, chard, leeks, cabbage, lettuce, kale, and cauliflower, echoing those in the Fetzer Vineyards organic garden in California.

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