Each holiday cottage has its own terrace, with garden furniture, a barbecue and a big white umbrella. They have wide borders on each side, thickly planted, and behind them trellis almost buried under climbers; you don’t feel overlooked at Bruern. The terrace of Aintree cottage, Newmarket cottage and Sandown cottage face the lawn and Long Border of the walled garden: at the end, between the lime trees and above the high wall the blue hills rise from fields and woods towards Stow-on-the-Wold.

Some holiday cottages have their own secluded gardens – Epsom Cottage, Saratoga Cottage, Goodwood Cottage, Bookers Cottage and Shipton Cottage – many with vine and rose covered pergolas and wide, flowery borders. Each has its own atmosphere: Shipton Cottage, for instance, is set in an orchard of ancient, gnarled and lichened apple trees on a velvet lawn, while Cope Cottage’s west terrace, a suntrap, is redolent of the aromatic scents of the Mediterranean maquis – lavender, cistus, santolina, salvia, helychrysum and thyme baking on the hot stone. The colour schemes vary too; there are mauves and pinks and silvers in some, while others have a lighter, cooler feel with yellows and whites and true blues.

Weir House has large gardens back and front with terraced seating and eating areas, a croquet lawn and even a tiny formal courtyard with box hedges.

Every year we plant between seven and twelve thousand bulbs. Spring is a Botticelli-like profusion of snowdrops, dwarf irises, species tulips, narcissi of every kind and size, tulips of every colour, anemone blanda, anemone de Caen, chionodoxas, scillas, camassias, and erythroniums, to be succeeded in summer by all sorts of alliums and lilies; later in the year come cyclamen neapolitanum, crinums and nerines. Pat the gardener despairs every time he sees my annual bulb order. He doesn’t think there’s any room left underground.

There is not a lot of room on the surface either. Roses (we grow over 130 different varieties), paeonies, irises and oriental poppies are packed together in a glorious profusion at midsummer, with phlox, Japanese anemones, Echinacea, persicaria, sedums, dahlias and asters waiting in the wings for the grande finale. It’s not easy for a weed to squeeze between them. You might well think that gardening on the scale we do and with our degree of intensity is a bit above and beyond the call of duty, but we feel that is what marks luxury holiday cottages apart from the common herd.

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