An inside look at garden designer Paul Bangay's Stonefields listed for sale

• Owners: Garden designer Paul Bangay and his husband Barry McNeill
• Address: 20 Belty Drive, Denver, Victoria
• Type of property: A Tuscan-inspired country house set in gardens the designer describes as his “life’s greatest work” 
• Price guide: $8 million-$8.8 million

When garden designer Paul Bangay first drove down the dirt road lined with manna gums to wander through a secluded patch of land in Victoria, he could envision within moments that the paddocks he was standing in would make a spectacular country estate.

“The one gift that I acknowledge that I’ve got is that I can walk onto a site and see exactly how I think it should be,” he says. “So, I knew where the house was going to be, and I knew the type of garden I wanted and almost the layout of the garden straight away.”

SOLD - Price Withheld

20 Belty Drive, Denver VIC 3461

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Once the 20 hectares in Denver were officially his, Bangay sat down and sketched out his plan in a day: a house at the edge of the hill to drink in views of the valley, with the garden tucked behind and encircled by a great wall of hedging to shield it from wind and protect it from hungry deer and kangaroos.

Eighteen years later, Stonefields is just as Bangay had envisioned it – 20-metre-high trees stand majestically by thick hedges and a stunning array of lovingly tended plants and flowers. It is one of the most photographed gardens in the country. 

There is a hilltop swimming pool, a gatehouse, vegetable gardens and rolling pasture. And, to top off the whole regal experience, there’s Harold, the peacock Bangay and his husband Barry McNeill adopted nine years ago. 

“Someone was selling peacocks down the road, and they rang and said, ‘We’re going to get rid of them all. Would you like one?’ ” Bangay says. “And I went, ‘Oh, OK, I’ve never really thought about it, but I’ll try it.’ And now he’s our best mate; he just loves us, and we love him.” 

The couple’s five-bedroom, Tuscan-inspired villa is just as impressive as its grounds. Filled with rich texture and colour, sculptures and relics from Bangay’s travels, it is both luxurious and fascinating in equal measure. 

“I absolutely love working on the inside of the house as much as the garden,” he says with a laugh. “I feel like a frustrated interior designer. I think my style is called ‘restrained maximalism’; it’s classic, it’s timeless. I love collecting objects, antiquities, natural history pieces. I’ve done that my whole life, so it’s really an eclectic mix.”

Bangay says he has been known to pick the brains of his interior designer friends to get a paint colour or fabric just right. His late best friend, interior designer Stuart Rattle, was a great source of inspiration and designed many of Bangay’s favourite pieces of furniture and his fabulous kitchen.

“Stuart helped me with the layout of the kitchen because I am hopeless at food and kitchens,” Bangay says. “He did a really great job, and Barry is now the great beneficiary of that; he loves to cook. He’ll potter around the kitchen, and I’ll be in the sitting room either reading or waiting for dinner – we have a deal that I grow it, and he cooks it.”

Bangay’s favourite room, the sitting room, where he spends much of his free time, features a huge fireplace with French doors overlooking the valley to one side, and views of the garden to the other. In fact, much of the house enjoys the same all-encompassing outlook.

Bangay describes Stonefields as his “life’s greatest work” and a “really great PR exercise”, given the acclaim it has received, the books it has inspired and the commissions it has generated.

“I think it’s very important for garden designers – you spend your life designing gardens for other people, but what you create for yourself is your greatest calling card,” he says. “But it’s done. It’s as perfect as a garden can be. As a friend said to me, ‘If you’re considering changing the pebbles on the ground from a one-inch size pebble to a 1.5-inch size pebble, it’s time to move on!’ ”

The couple will remain in the area, given its winning blend of good soil, water, cool climate and proximity to Melbourne, but will live for a time in the house next door, which they also own and has been earning its keep as a popular bed and breakfast. When they find another property for Bangay to map out his last great garden, they hope to make it their “forever home”, which may bring some comfort to fans. 

“When we made the decision to sell, I had to explain it on our Instagram how hard this decision is and how I just feel like I’ve got one more garden to do,” Bangay says. 

“Then [suddenly] there were 480 comments about how they love the garden and how they feel me and the garden belong together, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I feel guilty!’ In a way, you almost feel like you’re deserting.

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“You look at the great gardens in England, and the owner and creator of those gardens lived in them for their entire lives, and they became synonymous with those gardens, and I always thought that’s what I would do here, and so there is a great sense of guilt in not doing that, but at the same time I think moving on and doing another one outweighs that thought.”

As for the style of his next great work, Bangay will keep his followers guessing.

“I think the new garden will feel completely different to this one. You need to keep evolving. Change is always good for designers. It’s time for me to experiment with different things.”