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It is intended to represent what an astronaut on a 600-day tour of Mars could grow in a biosphere while on the planet.

By growing plants useful for health, nutrition and simply for the pleasure of gardening the Martian allotment would help keep an astronaut mentally balanced while away from the home planet.

Everything in the garden was built or grown on the basis of what could be replicated on Mars itself and forms part of the research by the European Space Agency into the requirements of a mission to Mars.

Plants had to be chosen from those able to cope with restricted water supplies, which on Mars would be pumped from deep within permafrost, and which would have a practical use.

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Among the plants chosen were herbs, chillies, aloes and kale which by growing on Mars would help reduce carbon dioxide levels while producing oxygen. Opium poppies would have been planted for their medicinal qualities but flowered too early for the show.

They would be expected to find all the nutrients they require from the mineral-rich Martian soil, though a chemical process would be needed to fix nitrogen.

Features such as a table top and a swing chair could be made from metal no longer needed by the spaceship used to travel to the planet. A depression in the ground, called a nap station, would be created by compacting dirt and would provide a rest area.

Ms Eberle, an eight-time gold medalist at Chelsea, said: "I've lived this for eight years. I wanted to do it for the Millennium. I couldn't get the funding but kept going with the research.

"It was quite overwhelming to win Best in Show. You're natural reaction is to cry, silly though it may be. It's wonderful. It's the pinnacle, a bit like winning Olympic gold if you are an athlete.|

She said every feature in the garden could be built by an astronaut and that it would provide him or her with a place to wind down.

"He would be working in the garden - he's not going to be sitting drinking gin and tonic - but it would benefit his psychological welfare," she added.

The garden was built at a cost of about £250,000, the most expensive ever attempted by the sponsors, Bradstone.

The investment was felt well worthwhile by Ian Wright, of Bradstone, after it won both gold and the Best in Show. The victory was sweetened by the realisation that Marshalls, the firm's arch-rival and the sponsors of the flower show, had to be content with a silver medal.

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