The Frangipani Bench sits on the north path, under the oldest kamboja on the property. The tree drops its flowers overnight. By six there are thirty or more on the stone, white with a yellow throat, still cool to the touch. The bench itself is teak, worn pale at the arms, angled away from the rooms. Housekeeping sweeps at eight. Come before that and the path is as the tree left it. The scent carries furthest while the dew is still down.

The main pool deck has a far end that most people walk past. Two loungers sit beyond the last umbrella, half under a heliconia, facing the water rather than the sun. Call it the Far Corner. Before ten it holds shade and the pool is glass, unbroken except where a gardener nets a leaf off the surface. You can hear the filter running. After eleven the light reaches it and the quiet goes.

The lobby opens on three sides, and the tall Balinese umbrellas — tedung, white and gold, taller than a person — stand where the drive meets the steps. Two low chairs face them. These are the Umbrella Seats, and it is a midday place, or a wet one. Rain hits the fringe first and runs off in a ring. Ice moves in a glass on the table beside you. Nobody needs anything from you here.

Come before eight and the path is as the tree left it overnight.

The Stone Walk runs between the garden rooms and De’ Kesambi, sixty-odd flagstones set into grass, each one a stride apart. Take it at five, alone, without shoes. The stone holds the day’s heat on top and the grass between it is already cool. Frogs start somewhere to the left. The kitchen fans come on, and you catch garlic and charcoal a moment before you see the restaurant. Walk it once out and once back.

Every suite has a walled garden behind the bathroom — 20m², open to the sky, a plunge pool along one edge and a frangipani in the corner that drops into the water. It is the only one of the five you do not have to share. After ten, the wall takes the noise out of everything. There is enough light off the pool to read by, badly. The water stays warmer than the air until about midnight.

None of this needs booking, and none of it takes long. The frangipani at six, the Far Corner before ten, the umbrellas at midday, the Stone Walk at five, your own wall after dark. Do one of them properly and the day rearranges itself around it. The staff will leave you alone if you are sitting still — that is the one instruction we give them about the garden.

From November the rain does the watering and the work shifts to drainage. Gravel channels behind the villa hedges get cleared by hand, one bucket of silt at a time, because a blocked channel means standing water, and standing water means root rot in the heliconia. After a heavy night the grass holds the print of a foot for a minute. We stay off it until it firms.

Dry season runs the other way. By August the topsoil in the open beds turns pale and powdery by mid-morning, so we mulch heavily with shredded coconut husk and old leaf litter, four fingers deep around anything young. Mulch buys three days between waterings. It also keeps the soil cool enough that the ginger under the walkway does not sulk and drop its lower leaves.

Everything green that leaves the beds goes to the compost bays behind the staff entrance. Grass clippings, prunings, spent flowers from reception, vegetable trimmings from De’ Kesambi. The heap is turned every ten days with a fork. It steams when opened and smells of warm bread and wet wood, never of rubbish. Eight weeks on, it goes back into the beds as dark crumb. We buy very little soil.

The garden looks unbothered, and it takes five people every morning to keep it that way.

The frangipani get cut back once a year, after the wettest weeks pass and before the flowering push. We take out crossing branches and anything hanging below head height on the path to the villas, cutting just above a fork so the tree breaks into three rather than shooting straight up. The sap runs milky and stains linen, so it is early work, done before guests are walking.

Plant choice does more for the gardens than any amount of labour. Heliconia, alocasia, pandan, bougainvillea, ylang-ylang, and the old jackfruit by the north wall all cope with a soaked month followed by a parched one. Where something has failed twice we stop replanting it and put in what the neighbourhood already grows well. The beds near the main pool are on their third scheme; this one has not needed rescuing.

Pests are handled by hand where possible. Mealybug on the alocasia comes off with a cloth and soapy water. Snails get collected after rain. The frangipani caterpillars arrive in numbers twice a year, strip a tree in four days, and are picked off in the cool of the evening. We keep the spraying to a minimum, because the garden is also where guests eat breakfast.

None of this is visible for long. A guest walking to the pool at nine sees wet stone, a frangipani in flower, and grass that has already been cut. The work sits an hour or two behind them, in the dark, in rubber boots. That is the arrangement we like. The garden looks unbothered, and it takes five people every morning to keep it that way.

The sun clears the frangipani at around twenty past six. For the next half hour the light comes in sideways, low and yellow, and the pool floor fills with the moving shadow of palm fronds. Swim east and you swim into it. Swim back and the shadow of your own arms runs ahead of you along the bottom. By eight the light is overhead and flat, and none of this happens.

Sound arrives in order. First the koels, two notes repeated from somewhere behind the villas. Then doves in the rain trees, lower and slower. A gardener works the far end with a leaf net, and the drag of the pole across the water is the loudest thing in the garden. Traffic on Jalan Raya Kesambi does not really start until seven. Until then you can hear the filter, and that is about it.

The smell at that hour is wet stone first, then frangipani, then incense. Staff set the canang offerings out at the garden shrine around half past six — sandalwood and a little smoke drifting across the shallow end. The air is cooler than it will be by mid-morning, heavier if it rained in the night. Later the heat flattens all of it together. Before seven you can still pick out each thing separately.

Until then you can hear the filter, and that is about it.

You will usually have the long side to yourself. Breakfast opens the day for most guests, so the pool stays quiet until about half past eight. That means no one crossing your line, no towels laid out along the loungers, no music. If someone else is in, it is generally the same two or three people, doing the same thing, and nobody talks. The etiquette settles itself.

Towels are stocked in the pool house from six. The cabinet sits beside the outdoor shower on the garden side, refilled before the first swimmer arrives. Coffee starts early at De’ Kesambi — a flask on the terrace counter, and the machine a little later. Take it to the loungers under the rain tree. The kitchen proper opens at seven, so a full breakfast means waiting a little.

Guests in the private-pool villas sometimes skip the walk over, which is fair. A villa pool is four strokes end to end. The main pool gives you a proper length of clear water, and enough depth at the far end to push off properly. It is a short walk from the furthest villa, along the stone path past the lily pond. Sandals, towel, nothing else.

By half past seven it changes. The sun is over the roofline, the loungers begin to fill, and someone turns the terrace speakers on low. That is the signal. Swim a last length, take the shower by the frangipani, and sit with the second coffee while the garden warms around you. The pool will be busy by nine. It was yours for ninety minutes, and it will be again tomorrow.