Mattinson had won a contract to design the park for the London 2012 Olympic Games and he needed to find young local talent to fulfil his brief to help design planned gardens at the park relevant to an international and local audience during the Games and beyond.

As Mattinson sipped his Sunday morning coffee in his conservatory, he came across an article about up-and-coming garden designer Sarah Price, who has won much publicity, if not many gold medals, for her early efforts at RHS shows over the past three years.

Mattinson telephoned Price, 28, and gave her the job.

"It was just luck really," says Price of her landing of the plum role. "Neil was reading Gardens Illustrated and he saw something about me."

Price's garden will contain thousands of species and will form part of the Olympic Park, detailed designs of which were unveiled last week by the Olympic Delivery Authority.

The showcase will be located between the main Olympic stadium and the aquatic centre. It will take visitors through four periods of garden history, inspired by the great British plant collectors. Three-quarters of Olympic visitors will see Price's work. Her rise to the top has been phenomenally quick. Just six years ago, she was a fine art undergraduate at Nottingham Trent University.

Price lectures at KLC but is reticent to talk about her plans or career. However, she is passionate on her philosophy - she says she views landscape and garden design as a "temporal, ever-evolving medium. My fine art training has given me the confidence to design with freedom and sensitivity. The unique attributes of a site - the natural landforms, the dominance of a local vernacular or type of vegetation - are drawn upon to create enhanced unity, harmony and sense of place."

She is influenced by Dutch designer Piet Oudolf and has spent a year as a gardener at Hampton Court. Fellow designer Cleve West has suggested she could become the new Beth Chatto.

The amount of publicity she has won is huge, given her experience. Garden writers look at her CV and use the word "painterly" to describe her naturalistic planting. A background in fine arts gives garden design some of the credibility that organisations such as the Society of Garden Designers crave for it to have.

Price has exhibited her design work at Newlyn Art Gallery, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Museum of Garden History. She will be advising Mattinson, a landscape architect with 30 years' experience, on planting. Mattinson denies reports that he eschewed big garden-design names in favour of Price.

Brixton-based Price, who has lived in east London near the Olympic site, is acknowledged as quiet and self-effacing - rare among garden designers, and difficult to square with the publicity-hungry world of garden design.

Mattinson says that doesn't matter because she has a "refreshing twist to her work ... a strong understanding of plant communities and textures, and we wanted a textural approach to the garden. She understands the relationship between colour and sensuality. She's young and up-and-coming and this is a showcase for new designers."

Yet the judges have not been kind at Chelsea. Desperate for gold, QVC has dropped her in 2009 in favour of the experienced Association of Professional Landscapers chairman Adam Frost. Frost says that sort of thinking could backfire, but after two years of lots of photos but no big gong, QVC has opted for experience rather than youthful experimentation.

Price says: "I'm having a year off Chelsea this year. It's good to keep fresh. And the Olympics is going to take up a lot of time. But I have some private client work and the Battersea Park Thrive project going on."

CV

2002: Degree in fine art at Nottingham Trent University

2004: Qualifies in landscape architecture at Oxford College of Garden Design

2006: Soft landscaping and design of Saga garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show

2006: Wins gold for Conceptual Garden: Difference and Repetition at RHS Hampton Court show

2007: Wins silver gilt for QVC Bejewelled City Garden at Chelsea

2008: Wins silver for QVC's RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden

2008: Wins Thrive competition for garden revamp at Old English Garden Battersea Park, London

2012: Set to unveil Olympics garden with LDA Design.