Visit to one Australia's top landscapers, Paul Bangay

Hello keen gardeners, as it’s the December article, I wish all the readers out there, a very happy Xmas, and I hope your garden is currently a real joy, and looking tops for xmas and the coming summer months.

My wife and I were recenly very fortunate to go to an open day in Melbourne in the garden of one of Australias very top landscape designers PAUL BANGAY - what a great landscaper! He took a personally guided tour for 1.5 hours through his own garden called STONEFIELDS. Paul designs and creates gardens  for many known celebrities and wealthy people in various countries around the world.

I have several of his books that I often show my landscape clients because I find his garden styles very appealing - very clean lines, no fuss gardens, and love the way he uses colour in a garden. He plants in the same colour - like the white garden, which probably had 25 different white flowering plants, so that as one plant finished its flowering, another was just starting, carrying the white theme throughout the whole year. He had a blue garden and a red garden, which he had designed like a persian carpet sort of pattern and colouring.

There was alot of buxus topiary on a very grand scale - one garden using about 50 buxus topiary balls of various sizes lining both sides of a path - certainly very eye catching - but I am not sure you or I would have enough time to trim them all on such a large scale.The hedges were absolotely immaculate - I have never seen such perfectly trimmed hedges - they were all dead straight - and not even a millimetre off being perfectly level!! Very impressive - and the variety he used most around his property was privot - yes the common s

mall leafed privot that we regard as a noxious weed in our country and gives people bad allergies. The biggest issue Paul has with keeping his garden up to such a high level is the soaring high temperatures in the 

summer. His new property at Stonefields has ample underground streams, which he can tap into to provide the water he needs, to keep everything looking so lush and healthy.

His lawn was as good as the golf greens at Augusta - they were immaculate, and certainly not one weed or even one blade of grass out of line - he has his lawn mown twice a week!! Yes twice a week!!

I am going to put some of the photos that I took of the garden with this article, so if you are interested, go and have a look below.

I found the trip very inspiring, and as a landscaper its great seeing another in the same profession, pushing the design and plant boundaries to another level.

Merry Xmas to you all, and I look forward to catching up with a lot of you in 2015.

Regards,

Graeme, Rukuhia Homestead Landscaping

Paul Bangay's 'Stonefields' Garden, Melbourne