Quirk’s Garden

The Designers

Ben Frey

Ben has spent 40 years building houses, wineries, towers, rebuilding barns, and making rustic furniture and garden structures. His favorite pastime is transforming and reinterpreting old wood and metal back into furniture for house and garden.

He has designed built rustic furniture and structures for gold medal winning gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show in London and the World Garden Competition in Hamamatsu, Japan. He renovated and managed an organic farm in Saudi Arabia.

Ben believes old wood can be transformed from one purpose into another functional element that expresses its organic past as a tree, and its journey through the years with time, weather, lichen, livestock, and even woodpeckers.

Ben built the beer garden shade structure at the brewery, the rustic tables, booths, bathroom,

fence, and other structures and projects there.

Kate Frey

Kate is a noted garden designer, writer, garden educator, and pollinator advocate. She designed and managed well known gardens in California such as the organic 6-acre public garden at Fetzer Vineyards, Lynmar Winery, and the Melissa Garden, a pollinator garden. Her gardens won 2 gold medals and a silver-gilt medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in London where she twice met Queen Elizabeth, and shook her hand. She has created gardens in Malaysia and Japan and managed an organic farm in Saudi Arabia. Kate is a garden columnist for two newspapers and writer. Her book, The Bee-Friendly Garden co-written with Professor Gretchen LeBuhn was selected as one of the best 2017 gardening books of the year. Her book, Ground Rules was published in 2018.