Paul Bangay's new garden home is an idealised vision of the rural life.

AS A child, Paul Bangay longed for spring to end and summer to arrive. Now, though, he dreads the change in seasons.

This antipathy for a time he once loved stems from the drought and the impact it has had on gardening. The mere thought of the damage inflicted on a garden by sun, heat and minimal water makes him shudder. "It's just horrible," he says.

Bangay, one of Australia's leading garden designers, offers clients of his landscaping business water-management advice to minimise the amount of mains water they use while creating and maintaining a beautiful garden, whatever the size.

It is, he says, something he raises with clients, rather than the other way round.

"Funnily enough, people usually don't think about the water situation. They still think there's enough there even with restrictions. I tell them they can't count on that any more, they've got to secure their own water supply, such as tanks and greywater systems."

The same imperatives applied when Bangay began designing his own garden at Stonefields, a property in the Macedon Ranges he bought three years ago, and which is open to the public for the first time this coming weekend.

The property consists of 20 hectares of former cow paddocks, with panoramic views over Woodend, Kyneton and Malmsbury. A priority was installing underground water tanks with a holding capacity of 250,000 litres.

While the house was being built, Bangay started creating the garden. Despite its youth, it is already well defined. His signature parterre plantings are visible in the front beds and the potager, or kitchen garden. Instead of allees — avenues of trees that bind a garden together — Bangay has opted for informal mass plantings of trees around the perimeter to define the landscape and act as windbreaks.

He chose Pacific Sunset, a maple with glossy light-green foliage that displays rich autumnal tones, and dogwoods, another autumnal beauty, to create a woodland embracing the back garden. Offsetting the young plantings are centuries-old eucalypts.

Whereas his former country estate, St Ambrose Farm in Woodend, was inward looking, Bangay has capitalised on the views at Stonefields, siting the house to capture the broader landscape and creating a Tuscan ambience, albeit without the Italian cypresses in the distance.

The centrepiece of the back garden is the pool and a surrounding lawn that "floats" over the hill onto the horizon. Flanking the pool are "seats" of box hedges. On either side of the lawn, garden beds brim with grasses and yellow and bronze foliage to complement the landscape.

"I'm mad for these lush perennial plantings now and they merge with the landscape when all the grass in the paddocks is brown," Bangay says.

The terrace beds are planted with a horizontal form of juniper. Its fan-shaped leaves and berries were popular in 1930s gardens and are much sought after by bees, something we should all encourage.

The front garden has classic parterres that in winter are a riot of deep blue forget-me-nots and thousands of white tulips edged with banks of chive and Buxus sempervirens. The effect is evocative of stately French gardens, his inspiration over the years.

Stone paths meander around the parterres, which contain lush plantings of herbaceous perennials — Canterbury bells, allium, catmint and white rugosa roses. It's a new look for Bangay, who previously shunned floral displays in favour of formal sculptural designs. "As I'm getting older, I'm loving more flowers," he says.

Italian cypresses and Jonathan apples, now in blossom, frame the parterres, while in the orchard heritage apples will ensure an abundance of traditional varieties at harvest time.

Completing the rustic picture, the potager produces herbs and vegetables in summer, while chickens provide free-range eggs and British White cattle — a rare and endangered breed reared at Highgrove by Prince Charles — may provide the occasional steak for the barbie. Looking at them in the paddock, though, their gorgeous long eyelashes framing their pretty faces, it's impossible to think of them anywhere but wandering around or chewing their cud in this idyllic setting.

Internal screenings in the front garden include privet hedges (Ligustrum vulgare); in the wider landscape beyond, hawthorn hedges share space with oak trees to complement the existing mature oaks that frame the front of the property.

A Paul Bangay design would not be complete without urns and statuary, and this time he has chosen bronze ornamentations of local fauna: coiled brown snakes make dramatic water features in the central paved area. Balls of box and stone orbs, classic Bangay accoutrements, are displayed near the gate leading to the potager.

A perennial garden, it will be dormant in winter but no less spectacular given its evergreen framework. "We get snow and frost up here so in the dead of winter it goes back to being a skeleton, which I love, because the frost covers the hedges and plays up the architecture of the garden."

Bangay says it broke his heart to leave St Ambrose Farm, but he wanted something more rural. "It takes so long to establish a garden, but I wanted somewhere where I could have horses and cattle and meandering beds with flowers and parterres."

He has achieved that with distinction.

Paul Bangay's garden is open Saturday and Sunday as part of charity event DesignFest. Tours at 10am and 11.30am; cost: $40. Advance bookings required and numbers are limited. Details: http://www.gardendesignfest.com.au

How to maintain your garden in the drought

Harvest and store rain water.

Heavy mulching.

Select drought-tolerant plants that suit your garden.

Use hardy lawn species or reduce your lawn areas.

Mix water crystals into your soil mix.

Choose appropriate soft and hard landscape areas.

More advice can be found in Bangay's new book, Garden Design Handbook.