STORY BY MAHMOOD FAZAL, PHOTOS BY CHRIS TURNER

In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo writes “A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” The lyrical power of Paul Bangay’s gardens allow the wanderer to lose themselves in dreams sculpted from the divine.

Paul Bangay is working from a private studio in his country residence Stonefields, “My mother was a great gardener. She was very involved in design back then, very much a native focus. She used to work with Ellis Stone, the famous landscape designer. It was a garden that evolved all the time, that’s what I loved about it,” explains Paul, nostalgically. “I grew up in the outer Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, we had ten acres so I had my own collection of ferns and a big vegie garden.”

Finnish tradition holds that one who finds the seed of a fern in bloom on Midsummer night will, by possession of it, to be guided and be able to travel invisibly to the locations where eternally blazing Will o' the wisps mark the spot of hidden treasure. When Paul was young he would collect ferns down by the Otways, maybe he found something else.

Many nineteenth-century paintings of faerie kingdoms are embellished with ferns and fronds, lending an otherworldly and fantastic sensibility to these enchanted landscapes. “Gardens were very magical for me when I was young because I wasn’t thinking about their design,” says Paul, “it was about being immersed and lost in the ecosystem of plants and animals working together.”

Today, Paul is regarded as Australia’s leading garden designer, with landscape art that
is earthed in timeless elegance and formal intricacies. “I was very influenced by the work of Russell Page. I became obsessed and read his biography, The Education of a Gardener. I just felt a strong rapport with his sense for design. And David Hicks who I met when he would travel to Australia. He was very influential in terms of my style. He was very sculptural, very architectural, with a very masculine design. He taught me a great deal about scale and proportion.”

Bangay’s gardens are distinctive in their use of water, premium boundaries that offer seclusion and a dominant use of plant materials that utilise diverse planting schemes. On his style, Bangay asserts, “Gardens aren’t a show piece for me, they aren’t a fashion item. They make people happy. The most primitive purpose of a garden is to create your own sense of paradise and I still think that is what I like to do, create a great place of beauty that cocoons us in greenery and plant material.”

In April, Stonefields is available for a private tour during Bangay’s favourite time of the year.

“I think Stonefields is my greatest design. I live in this garden and just love it. It’s a garden I can always experiment in so it’s always changing.” In a palette of Yellow, Orange, Red and Crimson, colour is brought to the foreground of Stonefields with the Maples in the woodland garden, the serpentine Hawthorn hedges, and the Boston Ivy and Crimson Glory Vine—working together to serenade the house.

When asked about his favourite plant these days, Bangay has moved on from his love of ferns, “Oak Trees, they are slow growing and long lasting. They give great shade. I love the structure, the 18th Century form that you see in paintings.”

Paul Bangay
paulbangay.com stonefieldsthefarmhouse.com