Edna Walling

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Markdale, near Crookwell, New South Wales - garden designed by Walling in 1947

The lake at Markdale

Garden path at Markdale

Edna Walling (1895– 8 August 1973) was one of Australia's most influential landscape designers.

Walling grew up in the village of Bickleigh in Devon, England. When she was 14 years old she emigrated to New Zealand and three years later moved with her family to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Walling studied horticulture at Burnley College and after some years as a jobbing gardener commenced a design practice in the 1920s.

In the 1920s, Walling began to develop a village at Mooroolbark on the outskirts of Melbourne. The first cottage she built was for herself and named after the village of Sonning on the River Thames in England. She sold subdivisions of the land only to people who were prepared to accept designs for cottage and garden prepared by her.

In 1926, Walling began contributing regularly to Australian Home Beautiful. Her design practice grew and she worked across Australia, in Perth, Hobart, Sydney, and Buderim in Queensland. Her Victorian commissions included designing the lily pond for Coombe Cottage, Dame Nellie Melba's residence in Coldstream; Durrol for Mrs Stanley Allen Mount Macedon; Cruden Farm garden for Mrs Keith Murdoch (now Dame Elizabeth), Langwarrin (Gardening Australia website: Cruden Farm).

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

She was the author of several books on landscape design:

Gardens in Australia 1943,
Cottage and Garden in Australia 1947 and
A Gardener's Log 1948

In the 1950s, Walling 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.

In 1967, she moved from Melbourne to Buderim.