The days of wine and roses, when hordes of rich people from the City of London spent their bonuses on buying up country retreats in the Cotswolds, may have faltered, but they are not gone — at any rate as far as the roses are concerned.

Neil Nicholson of Nicholsons Nurseries of North Aston — which besides supplying plants, also has landscaping and forestry divisions — said: “Admittedly, the forestry side has tailed off a little, thanks to the crunch in the City, but overall we are not seeing anything like the slowdown we feared, and the plants side is holding up well.”

The nurseries were originally founded by Neil Nicholson’s father, Roderick Nicholson, in Middleton Stoney in 1979; then they moved to their present 25-acre site in 1987, with Neil Nicholson joining the firm in 1992.

Now the company, which has itself been growing like a healthy plant for the last 15 years, has a £3.5m turnover and employs 42 people across its three divisions But growing things for a living has turned out to be a capital-intensive business as well as a labour-intensive one. In 2006/7 Nicholson’s found it was paying out more than £12,000 a year on water — so the firm decided to build its own £80,000 reservoir.

So, thanks partly to a £33,000 contribution grant from the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA), as part of its water efficiency programme, rainwater for irrigating the nurseries is these days collected into a 6,500 sq metre pool from the barn roof, polytunnels, and even from the car park.

The nursery contains a myriad of plants along with such things as pots, wheelbarrows, watering cans and waterbutts — indeed anything for the garden. And alongside the garden plants are 50,000 container-grown trees and 500,000 bare-rooted trees.

Mr Nicholson said: “What we provide is management in all its senses. Our landscaping team can design your garden, or your forest for that matter, and supply all the plants and trees you might need.

“We have a team of six full-time people to maintain your garden. And there are three full-time foresters, qualified arborealists, plus a tree supply team too.”

The nursery is open for sales, growing nearly all its own products. But much of the firm’s business consists of hand-building gardens. This is where the landscaping team come into their own, though even Mr Nicholson admits that calling them in is hardly for people without deep pockets.

He said: “Most customers are paying £10,000 upwards. The design fee is usually between £400 and £800 ,so its hardly worth it for people spending much less than that.”

Perhaps the most attractive point about Nicholsons is that everyone there seems to love what they do: and even if what they do is sometimes expensive, the motto appears to be that if a job is worth doing at all, its worth doing well — without skimping or cutting corners. Not necessarily easy when recession looms.

Government grants for planting trees may not be as plentiful now as they once were, but there are still some incentives about for farmers and estate owners to plant trees either as future woods for eventual harvesting, or for screening, or parkland. And of course Nicholsons keep themselves up to date about such possible sources of money.

But perhaps fortunately the company does not depend solely on individuals for its daily bread-and-butter business. Institutions such as hospitals, universities and colleges (notably Oxford University colleges), and local authorities have a duty of care to the public. This requires them to ensure that any trees they own are safe — a requirement that often results in Nicholsons being called in.

Mr Nicholson said: “Sometimes a customer may delay an inspection and then find a tree does indeed need attention. Then they find they need an entire survey of all their trees — which of course is more work for us.”

Mr Nicholson said that most landowners realise sooner or later just how much expertise is needed in land management. There are continual choices to be made, for instance whether to have fences or hedges, walls or screens.

Mr Nicholson said that proper woodland management is essential both for the maximising of timber production, and for the conservation of wildlife.

He said: “A well-managed woodland, such as one in which coppicing is practised, can produce a steady supply of small timber. With a mixture of open glades, partial and total tree cover, it can also maintain a wide variety of environment for animals, birds, insects or flowers.”

As for those City gents whose hedge funds have bought them Cotswold estates, perhaps in future they will have more time to live in them.