Westonbirt Arboretum

Westonbirt is a collection of trees gathered from around the world and planted across six hundred acres near Tetbury, begun by a wealthy Victorian, Robert Holford, who had the land, the money, and the long patience that planting trees requires. Forestry England runs it now, and it holds one of the great tree collections anywhere, fifteen thousand of them and more, set out along miles of cut rides.

It is busiest in autumn, when the Japanese maples turn and the place fills with people who have driven a long way to look at colour. The acer glade in October is one of the sights of the English year, and it draws the one dependable crowd the quiet end of the county sees.

The rest of the year it is mostly empty and the better for it, a wood you can walk in for a morning and meet almost no one, the older trees standing where men long dead decided they should.

A man who plants an avenue knows he will not see it finished. That is the Cotswolds temperament in a single act: do the slow thing well, for the people who come after, and do not expect to be thanked for it.