We are landscape advisors to the Gage family at Firle Place, a grade 1 listed manor house and registered landscape dating back to the fifteenth century. Our work consists of small interventions to help reconcile the twin functions of the landscape, as a setting for family life and an attraction for the paying public. The two are of course interrelated, and at the core of all our projects is the animation of the gardens as a domestic environment. Here we are guided by practices of landscape stewardship that go back many centuries.