The passion for plants and flowers never ceases. Look out for colourful displays in towns as well as villages. Some gardens are open to visitors all through the year. Many others are opened especially, under the National Gardens and Red Cross Schemes. Every year, whole villages arrange open days in this way – look out for these special opportunities to look and to enjoy.

Apart from the cottage garden, it is the manor house garden, which most typifies the Cotswolds, and the National Trust’s Hidcote Manor Gardens, near Chipping Campden are world-famous. Look out for Kiftsgate Court Garden nearby.

Sezincote, near Moreton-in-Marsh radiates the brilliance of a garden design, which brought experts like Repton and Daniell to mould a partly oriental garden around an Indian style house. Close by, Bourton House Garden and Mill Dene Garden are two more in the vicinity not to be missed.

At Westonbirt, near Tetbury, and Batsford, near Moreton-in-Marsh are world-famous arboreta, designed and built on a grand scale and perfectly complementing the grand houses they served. Batsford has over 1,000 specimens of different trees; Westonbirt covers 600 acres.

Further details from Visitor Information Centres; look out for the National Gardens “yellow” guides to Gardens Open.