Gardening stereotypes: the Euro gardener Xavier considers English gardens messy, smelly and full of dead leaves. He recalls his grand-mère's chic town house garden in the 8th arrondissement, a stone zone looked at but never entered, and wants to recreate this desiccated daydream in Notting Hill Gate as a refined refuge from the rosbifs, with their incomprehensible "shabby-chic" ethos and liking for the countryside. For Xavier, cutting loose in the garden is leaving a topiarised ball unclipped a week too long. He has never walked barefoot on the creamy Portland stone floor, kept as immaculate as the carpet inside the house. Stray leaves from other gardens constitute a personal affront (one blustery autumn he threatened to sue the local council if the limes on his street shed any more foliage). Topiary stands to attention on his terrace, where the dining table and chairs (£7,000 from Kontaktikonic on the Fulham Road) take up three-quarters of the available space and a wine cooler dispenses Montrachet and passion-fruit carpaccio. Having insisted on a lap pool, Xavier found each length took only 3.2 seconds, so he added a black liner and now calls it a "reflecting meditation pool." His only concession to decoration, a tiny gilded Tiffany Buddha in a niche, is a reminder of his posting to the bank's Shanghai office. Xavier is seldom home before nightfall, so there are 43 uplights, downlights, sidelights, spotlights and underwater lights in the garden, although following an electric shock from the dimmer panel he has used scented candles instead ("Parfum d'Algerie," from a little atelier on South Molton Street). As these do not adequately illuminate the changes of level in the terracing, more than one guest has been unexpectedly immersed in the lap - sorry, meditation - pool.