Stuart Rattle's Musk Farm

Gardening & Environment Biography & Memoir Australiana

Stuart Rattle’s Musk Farm invites readers into the celebrated Australian garden that designer Stuart Rattle and partner Paul Bangay transformed from a Victorian era dairy farm into an internationally admired horticultural showpiece. This lush 2014 hardback pairs Bangay’s crisp prose with rich landscape photography to trace the property’s evolution, seasonal rhythms and the creative friendship that shaped every hedge and parterre.

Ideal for gardeners, landscapers and lovers of Australian heritage, the 192-page volume doubles as a practical style guide and a memoir of place. Chapters move from concept sketches to mature vistas, revealing how Rattle’s fearless colour schemes and Bangay’s disciplined structure produced timeless outdoor rooms against the harsh Musk countryside.

The book remains in very good condition with only faint edge scuffs, no inscriptions or dog-ears, and a firm binding ready for repeated browsing or gift-giving. Its generous size and matte pages showcase planting plans, before-and-after views and quiet portraits of the owners at work.

Collectors of contemporary garden writing, regional history and design autobiography will appreciate this firsthand account of one of Victoria’s most photographed private landscapes.