Paul Bangay is looking at a bare patch of dirt in the vegetable garden at Stonefields, the 20-hectare property in Victoria’s central highlands he bought in 2004 and turned into one of the country’s most significant and admired gardens.

“If you look close enough you can see green shoots,” he says. It’s midwinter, and Bangay is wearing brown chinos and a chambray shirt under a puffer jacket.