"Now I'm here, I just want to get in there and get started."
Alas Kate Frey has another three days to wait until she can start work on the Fetzer Sustainable Winery Garden. But she has already visited the hundreds of plants lined-up for her design - it was the first thing she did after stepping off the plane from California. "Yesterday a few were a little further along than they should be but I'm sure we can salvage a portion of them".
It is no wonder Frey is keen to get going. The windmill "a symbol of mid-west", the winery (with solar panel), and the cypress tree are mapped out on her design, but she is yet to position the plants - 85 species in total. "It's like weaving a tapestry; it has to happen on site. Each square foot will have at least four, sometimes eight different plants - it will be like a carpet."
Chelsea, she says, is like moving into a neighbourhood of people with similar interests. "People are always borrowing each others drills. It is focused but friendly - there isn't much chatting." But having won gold medals in 2005, she is confident her latest garden will spark a reaction. "Our gardens are very bright compared to the rest of Chelsea, but they use nature's colours. Wildflowers break all the colour rules but it works - there are lots of lessons to be learnt from nature."
Nature plays a huge part in Frey's design - it is at once a celebration of nature and an example of how gardeners must work in accordance with climate and soil. "Sustainability is something anybody anywhere in any climate can practice," she says. "It is very important to plant appropriate plants, especially with water shortages looming. There are just as many appropriate plants as there are inappropriate plants and they are just as beautiful. Growing the right plant in the right place is the key to sustainable gardening"
Her garden focuses on different microclimates - mimicking the natural environment of California. A system of aquatic plants cleanse and filter excess water from the winery, while grasses and wildflowers, planted in an area of dry soil to the right of the winery under the grape vines, represent the Californian vineyards.
"In California the rainfall is always very fickle - some years there's a lot and some years there is very little," she explains. "The easy way to garden or farm is to grow things that grow easily in your environment and that you have time for. Gardening is not going to be rewarding if your plants require too much maintenance. Grow plants that give back to you - not ones that bloom for two weeks a year, but for nine months."
British gardeners should not be deterred from experimenting with the Californian varieties in the Fetzer garden. "Some of them do much better here than at home. Desert bluebell is migrating here and never coming back!" Frey jokes. "Here it is over a foot high with gentian-blue flowers and burgundy-tinged foliage. It is clearly much happier." Poached egg plants - otherwise known as meadow foam - also thrive in the UK, she says. "They are very common in vineyards - wonderful for pollinating insects and it just blooms and blooms in Britain."
Frey doesn't profess to have built the windmill and winery, destined to become icons of green power at this year's show - and with her large blue eyes, long fair locks and slight frame, this would be hard to believe. They were the made by her husband Ben who can "make anything and fix everything" and symbolise the Fetzer vineyard's own conversion to sustainable methods a decade ago, after Frey first designed them an organic, sustainable garden. "It was to be a marketing tool to illustrate the lifestyle aspects of wine but they saw at once a cross-over of information and techniques could transform the vineyard."
It is this move towards appropriate gardening that Frey believes all gardeners must embrace. "It is a question of accepting a different aesthetic to the one we've been brought up with, one which is just as beautiful and rewarding."
