Stuart Rattle's Musk Farm
Australian History Gardening & Horticulture Biography & Memoir Nature & Environment Lifestyle & Hobbies Landscape Design Coffee-Table / Photography
Stuart Rattle’s Musk Farm is the hardcover garden biography every Australian gardening library needs: 192 lavish pages where celebrated landscape designer Paul Bangay documents the rise, glory and tragic loss of one of Victoria’s most iconic country gardens. Through Bangay’s intimate first-hand account and rich contemporary photography, readers walk the long crab-apple walk, linger under the laburnum arches and explore the fabled double perennial borders that made Musk Farm a pilgrimage site for horticulture lovers nationwide. The book doubles as a practical master-class: Bangay dissects the design tricks, plant choices and maintenance routines that kept the garden picture-perfect across the seasons, so you can translate Musk Farm’s timeless scale and symmetry to your own patch of dirt.
What sets this 2014 first edition apart is its rare combination of personal memoir and local history. Bangay chronicles his 25-year friendship with owner Stuart Rattle—from weekend plant-hunting trips to frantic pre-open-garden all-nighters—giving buyers an insider view that later reprints can’t replicate. The large-format hardback (239 mm tall, 852 g) showcases the rolling Daylesford landscape in gallery-quality plates, making it as much a coffee-table art book as a gardening reference. Readers interested in Australian social history will also appreciate the embedded snapshot of 1990s–2000s rural lifestyle and the burgeoning Australian open-garden movement.
For collectors, this copy is a standout: tight, unmarked pages with only faint edge scuffs—no inscriptions, ex-libris plates or dog-ears to detract from its value. Because the original print run was modest and Musk Farm itself no longer exists in its full glory, very-good-condition copies are increasingly scarce. Whether you’re hunting for design inspiration, a nostalgic piece of Daylesford heritage, or the perfect gift for a gardener who has every plant book on the shelf, Paul Bangay’s Stuart Rattle’s Musk Farm delivers both practical know-how and a poignant story you’ll return to season after season.
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