Dangar William - Garden: William Dangar

WILLS WORLD

It is only with hindsight that lifes decisions settle into a number of clear phases in which the significance of each becomes apparent. Some choices are deliberate and rational; others are driven by gut instinct for people or place; and some are merely the sliding door moments which, for better or worse, drive life in a certain direction. Will Dangar has had them all in equal measure the teenager meandering through life who took the advice of a farrier to go and work as a stockman on one of Australias biggest cattle stations; the young man of twenty-one who followed his heart to Sydney; and the personable landscape gardener who went for a meeting with a glossy design magazine to show them some recent work, and came away with the title of garden editor. Each phase has enabled the next, and he is both aware and grateful for all the stepping-stones that have enabled his career to get to its present point.

Will was a country kid, growing up on a grazing property in Armidale, in northern New South Wales and, while he refuses to draw a direct line from where he started out to where he ended up, there are certain irrefutable correlations. His ancestor, the famous English-born surveyor and pastoralist, Henry Dangar, acquired the original landholding in 1856 of which the Palmerston Estate was part. It was his grandson Norman Napier Dangar who commissioned Newcastle architect F. G. Castleden to design a substantial homestead, Palmerston, in 1909. This is where Will grew up, in a sprawling Edwardian pile, with its driveway a kilometre long, shaded by plane trees, and an expansive garden tended in its heyday by several full-time gardeners.

My father managed the property from 1972, and we lived in one half of the homestead, which was originally staff quarters, with my grandparents occupying the main part of the house, says Will. It was the best childhood you could have, with access to the pine forest at the back of the house where we could climb trees and build cubbies.

With little at boarding school grabbing his attention or interest, one suspects his report card would have read, Could do better. After a stint working in a bottle shop in Sydney, doing odd jobs in Armidale, and a year at the University of New England studying agricultural economics, he was, by his own admission, a bit of a lost soul. Eventually, seeking some adventure, he took the advice of friend Stuart Murray a farrier who shod Wills horses and signed up for a job as a stockman on the Northern Territorys Brunette Downs, a cattle station of three million acres.

Sixty-five thousand cattle had to be mustered once a year it was an amazing experience to be a stockman, to sleep in a swag on the ground and learn the skills of animal husbandry, says Will. Most importantly, it taught me how to work, how to apply myself properly to a task, and that has stayed with me to this day.

GARDEN DESIGN IS
SOMETHING THAT IS LEARNED
AND CRAFTED OVER TIME.
IM LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE
ABLE TO VISUALISE THE
POTENTIAL OF EVERY SITE
AND SEE CLEARLY WHERE
THE OPPORTUNITY LIES.
WILL DANGAR

After two years, one of those sliding door moments was to intervene. He met his wife-to-be Julia at a party in Armidale, and with no chance of her moving north, he agreed to go with her to Sydney. She promised to get me a job, says Will. And she did with a landscape design firm in the eastern suburbs.

From then on, something of his destiny was sealed, but what is interesting is the way in which it developed, and how a very specific set of relationships and learning opportunities shaped the particular style of business he has today.