15 Facts About Edna Walling

Edna Margaret Walling was one of Australia's most influential landscape designers.

Edna Walling's father encouraged her exploration and love of the English countryside and taught her woodworking.

Edna Walling was schooled at the Convent of Notre Dame, Plymouth, Devon.

Edna Walling "went on to design some significant Arts and Crafts gardens".

Edna Walling sold subdivisions of the land only to people who were prepared to accept designs for a cottage and garden prepared by her.

Edna Walling 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.

Edna Walling later drew inspiration from the Australian bush, creating a more naturalistic style with boulders, rocky outcrops and indigenous plants.

In small suburban gardens, Edna Walling created garden 'rooms' to make the garden appear far larger than it actually was.

Edna Walling's designs were heavily influenced by her experience of the Devon countryside as a child and designers such as Gertrude Jekyll.

About a quarter of Edna 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.

In 1926, Edna Walling began contributing regularly to The Australian Home Beautiful, and by the mid-1930s had become an expert photographer in order to illustrate her articles.

Edna Walling continued to send articles to editors until shortly before her death.

Edna Walling 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and she and garden writer and botanist Jean Galbraith enjoyed a long correspondence, generating materials for an unpublished manuscript 'The Harvest of a Quiet Eye'.

Edna Walling mentored the rural garden designer Kath Carr for many years.

Walling died at Nambour on August 8,1973, and Lorna 4 years later; she and Edna are buried there side by side under two trees.