The swimming pool presented a challenge to me. Generally, I hate looking at swimming pools, great turquoise monsters that they so often are. The solution here was to hide the pool, to turn it into a destination, happened upon by chance. So, I decided to build it in a palm-tree glade, at the very end of the Long Walk, to lend it a quality of secrecy and enchantment. The pool itself is raised, a rectangle of lucid green against the pinkish terracotta paths. Above the water soar giant palms, silhouetted against the sky as if in homage to Hollywood or the Hotel Bel-Air. In a note of high camp, twin bronze cobras, originally from the Pimlico Road, are positioned theatrically at the head of the pool, spouting water. At the other end is a domed building in miniature over the well that draws your eye as you are swimming. A rill flows from the pool into ponds below. Pots of papery white cosmos wave gently on either side of the water, and beyond these, creamy hollyhocks branch out at eccentric angles. But the greater part of the planting here consists of wildly verdant tropicana, strelitzias, tractor seat plants, and the Fern Walk, where ferns giant and diminutive droop over the path.

Christopher Masson also ensured that one of the great pleasures of the garden at Gazebo is that it keeps on giving throughout the seasons: the clivia garden comes out in March, the wall of white datura blossoms right through to October and the dry area, full of succulents, blooms in winter. I propagate cuttings and grow plants from seed year-round in the polytunnel and cultivate carnations and pelargoniums in the curved glasshouse in shades of fuchsia, palest pink, magenta and blood red. Pelargoniums link me to my childhood and to my home in Suffolk, The Temple, where they are placed all around the house, modest and florid, always charming. Initially I had planned to make the greenhouse a spot for outdoor dining; I loved the idea of a circular structure and built this glass semi-circle complete with curved bench.