Art Hotels — six hotels

Behind the house lies a walled kitchen garden, built when the estate was laid out and still cropped today. The kitchen leans on that enclosure through the growing season, and on the wider demesne of parkland, woods and water around it. What the walls produce goes a short distance across the grounds and no further.

Gardeners employed by the estate work the beds, following the old plan of paths and wall borders that the enclosure was built around. Around the demesne, farms in County Laois raise the meat and dairy on midland pasture. The garden is the estate's own, and its crew answers to the house.

An Irish midland garden cannot give citrus, coffee, rice or spice, and all of that arrives from abroad. In the depth of winter the walls yield very little, so more of what the kitchen uses then comes from outside the country.

Vines, olive terraces and a kitchen garden cover the estate that surrounds the hamlet, and the kitchen leans on that ground. Olive oil is pressed from the terraces, wine is made from the vineyards, and vegetables come from the plots. The support here is the property itself rather than any market beyond the gate.

The estate employs the people who work it, and the same operation runs the vines, the groves and the plots as one holding under a single owner. Tuscan hill terracing needs constant hand work to hold its walls, and that labour, along with the pressing and the winemaking, happens within the estate boundary.

Fish has to travel from the coast, and coffee, sugar and spice come from far outside Italy. The hills give oil, wine and vegetables generously, but they give no salt water and no tropical crop, so those are bought in.

Apples are the spine of this place. The estate has planted orchards across its ground alongside formal gardens and a large kitchen garden, and the kitchen leans on that planting. Cider is pressed on the property, and the beds supply vegetables and fruit through the season, moving only from the garden gate to the door.

Estate gardeners and orchard staff do the growing, working blocks of West Country apple varieties chosen for pressing rather than for looks. Somerset has grown and pressed apples for centuries, and the estate has put that county practice back on ground it owns, with its own crew and its own press house.

Coffee, citrus and spice cross oceans, and fish comes from the coast. England grows apples and garden vegetables well, and grows nothing that would replace the tropical shelf, so that part of the supply is imported as it is anywhere here.

Growing ground and forest sit around the cabins, and the kitchen leans on both. There is a market garden on the site, worked by the people who run the place, and beyond the beds the woods and the lake supply what the woods and a lake supply. The plot and the trees are the support here.

The founders and their small crew grow it themselves, running the beds as part of the operation rather than buying from elsewhere. The site sits in Halland forest on ground they have taken in hand, and neighbouring Swedish farms fill what the plot cannot cover. The work is done by the household on the spot.

A forest clearing in southern Sweden gives no coffee, no citrus and no rice, and those come from abroad. The Nordic growing season is short as well, so the months when the plot gives nothing are the months when distance does the work.

Between the house and the kitchen there is a garden, and it is the point of the place. Beds and glasshouses supply the kitchen through the season, and around the valley lie Devon farms and the south coast. This is one separate address within a small group of hotels run on the same idea.

Kitchen gardeners employed by the house work the beds, and a forager works the valley and the coast nearby. Beyond the wall, Devon farms, dairies and fishing boats out of the south coast ports supply the rest. The garden belongs to the hotel; the farms and boats are neighbours it buys from.

Coffee, citrus, sugar and spice come from far outside England, and there is no version of a Devon garden that changes that. In the cold months the beds slow almost to nothing, so more of the supply then arrives from beyond the county and beyond the country.

Ocean on one side and farm ground on the other. The resort keeps gardens and farm plots on the island and takes fish from the coast in front of it, and the kitchen leans on that pair. Sumba lies well off the main routes, so what the island and the water give matters more than usual here.

Local staff and island farmers do the growing, working the resort's own plots and land around them, and coastal fishermen bring in the catch from small boats. Sumba is a farming and fishing island with long-standing village practice, and the resort draws its crew and much of its supply from those same communities.

Sumba is remote, so a large share of everything else travels: wheat, dairy, wine, coffee for the guest supply and most packaged goods come by boat and plane through other islands. Distance is the defining fact of supply on an island this far out.