Paul Bangay’s Country Gardens

By Paul Bangay, Penguin/Lantern, $90, 298 pages, hardback

Celebrated Australian garden designer Paul Bangay spent his childhood roaming a sprawling Edwardian garden that had slipped into a state of romantic dilapidation. His love of the scale and elegance of country gardens was sparked by years spent playing in its overgrown orchard and revelling in its old roses and rampant wisteria. He even established a huge vegetable garden there when he was 10 years old. The 20 country gardens presented here, with stacks of fullpage photographs and text about their development, are his favourites. All are classic Paul Bangay – soothing formal symmetry, sharp hedges, velvety lawns, ponds and water features. Box “clouds” abound – his trademark topiaried spheres dot the pages (imagine the hundreds of hours legions of gardeners spend perfecting these immaculate orbs). The effect is softened by swathes of lavender, jasmine, hydrangeas and roses in harmonious tones (mostly mauves, pinks and whites). Bangay says a garden is never really complete, so he visits nearly all his country gardens at least annually, to tweak and admire, and enjoy diet-busting country meals laid on by generous rural folk. Among his favourite hosts are the owners of the one New Zealand garden featured, Mt Algidus in Canterbury (pictured above). A little looser than some of the others, it’s stunning, with wide flowering borders overflowing with roses, lavender, echinacea and penstemon. Lovers of Bangay’s style will find much to admire and inspire here. Rosemary Barraclough is NZ House & Garden’s associate editor