Where to see the world’s most beautiful gardens
One of Australia’s top landscape designers reveals the six places he travels overseas to see stunning blooms and topiary.
Paul Bangay is known for his elegant and timeless gardens. Having worked as a landscape designer for more than three decades, Bangay has amassed a client list of prominent people. From country estates to urban retreats, his portfolio includes gardens in Australia and New Zealand as well as North America, Europe and the West Indies. His superpower is an instinctive sense of proportion and scale. And he has a special infinity for rural Australian properties, where acreage and “unlimited horizons” provide for greater artistic freedom.
His own garden, Stonefields, is an impressive calling card, created over two decades from a blank 27ha canvas near Trentham in rural Victoria. Commanding wonderful views over a lush valley and wooded hills, the property’s many beautiful design elements are known to gardeners around the world. They include a romantic rose garden, apple walk and Italian-inspired walled garden using razor-edge geometric topiary, speckled with thousands of tulips in spring.
Early in his career, Bangay, who has a bachelor of applied sciences in horticulture from the University of Melbourne, became associated with formal designs in classical French or Italian style using plenty of tightly clipped hedging. He admits to being a “frustrated architect” but says this style began to soften while making Stonefields as he became more interested in “plants and in particular how they weave together to create an informal tapestry”. He has used Stonefields as a “place of experimentation”, altering schemes as he discovered new plants and flowers. “I can see my designs becoming softer, more mellow and more relaxed the older I get,” he says. And he hopes in future to spend more time on fewer projects as well as growing vegetables and writing books. Early influences included Australian designer Edna Walling and English gardening icon Vita Sackville-West (Bangay has a cottage garden in England’s idyllic Cotswolds).
In 2001 he was awarded the Centenary Medal for his contribution to public design projects and in 2018 the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to landscape architecture. Since 2020, he has served as a trustee for Cruden Farm, former home of Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch, and since 2018 as an ambassador for Prince’s Trust Australia.
With 12 books on gardens and design under his belt, Bangay’s latest celebrates his passion for working on big country gardens. With photos by long-time collaborator Simon Griffiths, Big Garden Design (Thames & Hudson) features projects from around the world.
Most memorable garden
The garden of Ninfa, which lies 45 minutes outside Rome. It’s only open Sundays and not every Sunday of the year, so check before travelling. The garden occupies an abandoned medieval village that has been romantically landscaped by simply covering the ruined buildings with wisteria and climbing roses. A clear chalk stream runs through the village and is full of magical water plants that is in itself a very special garden.
Favourite hotel
My favourite is Gravetye Manor in West Sussex in England. The owner and creator, William Robinson, who died in 1935, was one of the fathers of modern gardening and a proponent of wilder, softer gardens. The current owners purchased the hotel with the sole purpose of restoring and preserving the garden. It also helps that it has amazing food, and a new restaurant cradled in a glass box and immersed in the garden.
Design Inspiration
Travel is my No 1 source of design inspiration. I have travelled to Syria, Iran and Jordan for ideas for planting schemes for arid gardens and England for new sources of contemporary garden design.
Favourite Destination
The Priest’s House at Sissinghurst in England. The National Trust rents this iconic house that sits on the edge of the famous White Garden at Sissinghurst; garden creator Vita Sackville-West lived and died in this cottage. Staying here provides 24-hour access to the garden, meaning you can walk around after all the visitors have left in the late afternoon.
I take a glass of wine and sit on the mellow Elizabethan brick steps at the base of her writing tower (pictured) and dream that I am the custodian of this castle and garden.
Always go back
I always return to Rousham in Oxfordshire, designed in the 18th century by William Kent and almost unchanged. Also, the gardens at Hauser & Wirth gallery in Somerset, designed by my hero, Piet Oudolf. Cruden Farm in Melbourne is another favourite. London is our go-to place for Christmas; we love the cold and the lights of an English Christmas. Corfu in Greece is our summer home in Europe.
Travel Tips
I only travel with hand luggage where possible. I hate waiting for luggage and have experienced many lost baggage issues. I never leave home without silicon ear plugs as all hotels seem to have noisy air-conditioning, plumbing or exterior noises.
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