Edna Walling

Edna Margaret Walling (4 December 1896 – 8 August 1973) was one of Australia's most influential landscape designers.

Early years and migration

Walling was born in

In the 1920s, as Australia's first woman land developer, Walling began to create a village at Mooroolbark on the outskirts of Melbourne called Bickleigh Vale.^[3] With its unique collection of charming houses and gardens Bickleigh Vale is one of her most acclaimed achievements.^[1] It was designed to be 'the nucleus of an English village' and she built the first cottage, named after the village of Sonning on the River Thames in England, as her own home, though it had to be completely rebuilt after a disastrous fire.^[4][5] She sold subdivisions of the land only to people who were prepared to accept designs for a cottage and garden prepared by her.

Garden design

In 1935 Ellis Stones built a wall for her. Recognizing his ability—which she called 'a rare thing this gift for placing stones' – she suggested that he work for her. She gave him a free hand to create walls, outcrops, pools and paths in her gardens at some of Melbourne's finest homes which assisted in establishing a local garden tradition.^[6] Their best collaboration was seen in a free-form swimming pool and outcrop, built in 1939-40 for Edith Hughes-Jones at Olinda, Victoria

Her design practice grew and she worked across Australia, in Perth, Hobart, Sydney, and

Walling's expertise as an artist enabled her to produce watercolour plans to convey to clients the ambience of the finished gardens she intended to create.[13]^[14] Her plans from the 1920s and 1930s show a strong architectural framework with 'low stone walls, wide pergolas and paths – always softened with a mantle of greenery'.^[15] She later drew inspiration from the Australian bush, creating a more naturalistic style with boulders, rocky outcrops and indigenous plants.^[15] In small suburban gardens, Walling created garden 'rooms' to make the garden appear far larger than it actually was.^[15]

Her designs were heavily influenced by her experience of the Devon countryside as a child and designers such as Gertrude Jekyll. The houses of American architect Royal Barry Wills (renowned for his Cape Cod designs) and Lewis Mumford's books, The Culture of Cities and The Image of the City, also provided early inspiration.^[16]

Conservationist

In the mid-1940s Walling concentrated her interest in native plants which she had begun using in domestic gardens in the 1920s. In the 1950s, she became interested in the conservation of roadside vegetation and was a prolific writer in the press on the subject as well as her 1952 book The Australian Roadside. According to Trisha Dixon, Walling was an important influence on Australian gardening, steering tastes away from an Anglo-centric heritage towards a respect for the Australian climate and landscape.^[17]

In 1967, she moved from Melbourne to Bendles at Buderim in Queensland, where she had hoped to further develop the village concept but it did not progress.^[15] Despite her ill-health during her last years at Bendle, Walling continued to write prolifically, rewriting manuscripts, corresponding to newspapers on environmental issues, and trying to republish her books.^[15] About a quarter of Walling's designs survive and these are held in the State Library of Victoria and in private collections in Tasmania, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.^[15]

Writer-photographer

In 1926, Walling began contributing regularly to The Australian Home Beautiful,^[18] and by the mid-1930s had become an expert photographer in order to illustrate her articles.^[19][20] By the 1950s, Walling had stopped producing her regular column for The Australian Home Beautiful, but continued to write occasional articles for Walkabout,^{[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][excessive citations]} Woman's World, Australian House and Garden, The Sun News-Pictorial and The Age. She continued to send articles to editors until shortly before her death. The Happiest Days of My Life, covering the development of her holiday property at Lorne, was written by Walling but not published until 2008. She was the author of several books on landscape design, and she and garden writer and botanist Jean Galbraith enjoyed a long correspondence, generating materials for an unpublished manuscript 'The Harvest of a Quiet Eye'.:^[30]

• Walling, Edna; Dixon, Trisha, 1953- (1943), Gardens in Australia : their design and care (2nd. facsim. ed.), Bloomings Books,
  ISBN 978-1-876473-15-0{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
  )
• Walling, Edna (1947), Cottage and garden in Australia, Oxford University Press, retrieved 30 November 2019
• Walling, Edna (1948), A gardener's log, Oxford University Press, retrieved 30 November 2019
• Walling, Edna (1952), The Australian roadside, Oxford University Press, retrieved 30 November 2019^[31]
• Fielden, Lorna; Walling, Edna, 1895-1973 (1947), The gardener's warning, L. Fielden, retrieved 30 November 2019{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Walling, Edna (2008), The happiest days of my life (1st. ed.), Barbara Barnes,
  ISBN 978-0-646-49075-5