When Queen Elizabeth fulfilled gardener Kate Frey

I fulfilled Queen Elizabeth, the initially time, on a Monday afternoon in Could 2003.

It was the opening working day of the Chelsea Flower Show in London, a working day prepared and worried over for a strong calendar year. Proposals to participate are submitted to the Royal Horticultural Culture at least 9 months in progress. For a lot more than a century, the clearly show has been held the third 7 days in Might, disrupted only by the world wars and COVID-19. It’s held on the grounds of the Royal Healthcare facility in the Chelsea district of London, a venerable residence developed in 1692 by noted architect Christopher Wren, who also built St. Paul’s Cathedral.

How did I get there at the possibility to meet Britain’s monarch?

It all started a calendar year before, in early 2002. Simon Legge, the London-dependent European marketing supervisor for Fetzer Vineyards in Hopland, the place I labored as the landscape manager, requested if I would be intrigued in building a garden for the Chelsea Flower Show. He was a repeated visitor to Fetzer, coming for enterprise instructional seminars on enology and natural and organic and sustainable viticulture.

Simon often introduced European wine critics, wine distributors and salespeople for immersive excursions of the vineyard, organically managed vineyards and natural gardens. For Simon, the visits ended up a stage of connection with the location and values he considered vital, values he understood the British shared.

The garden design and proposal for the flower display would be a promoting exertion for Fetzer wines. Corporations, charities and governments sponsored gardens in the display for the favourable advertising options they supplied. As Simon spelled out to me that summer in 2002, the display is the greatest social and media party of the 12 months in the United Kingdom. Above 6 days, 157,000 people go to. Tickets sell out well in advance. There are two hrs of prime-time Television set a night during the display and considerable radio and print coverage for months in progress. Simon’s advertising and marketing intention was to cast Fetzer wines as a “cool” beverage, linked to organic agriculture and sustainable company practices.

By then, England felt like a next property to me. My 1st go to was in the 1970s when I was 17. When I arrived in London, I right away grasped the stark contrast concerning Wonderful Britain’s steadiness and history and the tumultuous electricity in Berkeley in the ’60s and ’70s when I grew up. In dorm rooms at youth hostels in aged properties, on the large empty and windy moors, about comforting cups of tea and clotted cream and scones in pink tearooms and between rock partitions developed by generations of laborers, I felt the full facet of time and mood remodeled. I put in about four months there, traveling, finding and volunteering with the Youth Hostel Affiliation in the Peak District. Gardens had not nonetheless turn out to be my target, but when compared to the arid California summers, the entire place felt like a garden.

When Simon proposed designing a garden that would spotlight the viticulture methods Fetzer employed to establish wholesome soil and aid biodiversity, I wondered how tricky it could be. Previously for 15 years, I experienced planned, planted and managed to perfection 5 acres of greens and flowers at the natural and organic garden in Hopland. How tough could it be to prepare and plant a 33-foot-by-39-foot plot at the flower clearly show?

The backyard I designed showcased agricultural protect crops and wildflowers planted as address crops less than grapevines. It appeared like a miniature illustration of Fetzer’s spring vineyards. To the absolute surprise of us all, the design and style was accepted by the Royal Horticultural Modern society. I did not know then that People in america hardly ever participated in the present, deemed the Earth Cup of horticulture.

It was evident from the to start with day of 16 invested developing up the back garden that we were being swimming in deep waters well earlier mentioned our heads. Cranes, lifts, lovely masonry, elegant vegetation, aged centenarian shrubs and trees, cement mixers and excavators surrounded us. Our set up group experienced shovels and aged wheelbarrows. Extra to the part of our garden getting an oddity was that all the crops in our garden have been agricultural plants, wildflowers and weeds — vegetation with really operating-class pedigrees as opposed to the coiffured denizens for other gardens that arrived by lined van and were escorted to their spots like models descending to the runway.

We determined our yard would in no way acquire a medal, but it would be the most talked-about backyard of the exhibit. Parallel strains of flowering deal with crops in the front realistically represented the swaths of deal with crops amongst the vine rows planted each and every 12 months to profit soil health and fitness and fertility and promote biodiversity. The strident yellow mustard, crimson clover, outstanding orange California poppies and white radish have been in unique and cringing contrast to the “polite colors” of the other gardens, where by harmony and pastel hues reigned. As an alternative of limestone paving and masonry buildings forming the back garden hardscape, our backyard garden featured gravel paths and woven-willow bed edging. The wildflower, clover, vetch and grass go over crop beneath the vines was just that — a deal with crop. It was basically a backyard of sticks, agricultural vegetation and wildflowers.

So much was at stake on the planet stage, and the back garden represented a world of feasible humiliation and in the eyes of the extremely conservative Fetzer corporation, a extremely highly-priced undesirable selection — costing about $200,000. On the world stage, we could develop into an American joke of a yard for all to see.

But at completion, our yard properly represented spring in the Fetzer vineyards — a delicate and profuse fairyland of wildflowers and agricultural plants in bloom underneath the vines. The naturalness was transporting. And we were being amazed but once more, when the garden gained a silver-gilt medal, just underneath a gold.

Which is when Queen Elizabeth visited and shook my hand. The then-head of the U.K. Soil Affiliation, Patrick Holden, who had hosted us at Prince Charles’ organic farm, Highgrove, stated, “You Individuals have occur above and bested our personal endeavors in organic and natural farming.” We bought large print, Tv and radio coverage, and Fetzer wine income fulfilled planning aims.

In 2003 and 2007, we concluded two other gardens, each also representations of Fetzer’s organic and sustainable techniques. They won gold medals, and the 2007 back garden was even a finalist for the People’s Preference award.

Queen Elizabeth frequented and shook my hand again in 2007. With her hand, she touched my coronary heart forever. That this sort of an critical person could publicly recognize a gardener from The us symbolizing the compact items of the globe — the wildflowers and agricultural vegetation that fed the soil, crops and bugs and birds — is however yet another reflection on the depth of her character.