A California Vineyard Garden at the Chelsea Garden Show

摘要

The Bonterra Organic Wine Garden with its twisted dark-trunked vines among wild plantings of rape, Californian poppies, crimson clover and buttercups was so reminiscent of the real thing in California (which it sought to recreate) that this garden hada free spirit and real life. In May of 2002, Simon Legge, the canny marketing director of Fetzer and Bonterra wines in Europe, approached me about designing a garden at the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show in London to promote Bonterrawines. He had in mind a garden that would reflect the springtime character of the organic Bonterra vineyards in Mendocino County, California, to illustrate the basic principles of organic agriculture: healthy soil means healthy plants, cover crops and compost improve the soil, and flowering cover crops attract beneficial insects. Chelsea, as he showed me in the show statistics, had great potential, with 150,000 visitors over five days, and has media coverage as intense as our superbowl. It had the added attraction of visits by the royal family and other celebrities. How could one turn down such an opportunity?