Edna Walling is best known for her garden designs. She is also remembered for her photographs, gardening and landscape books, magazine articles, and the creation of Bickleigh Vale, a village of English-style cottages. Her garden designs vary greatly and include city and country cottage gardens in which stone paths and low walls, carefully cut and well placed, are key elements.
The Walling family lived in the village of Bickleigh, Devon, before migrating to New Zealand, and then to Australia in 1914. In Bickleigh, Edna Walling's father William had trained his daughter in woodwork and honed her skills in perspective and scale. Father and daughter also enjoyed walking together through the English countryside. Walling's future garden designs were to reflect elements of this countryside, and of the various English gardens they visited.
After completing a course in horticulture at Burnley College in 1917, Walling commenced work as a jobbing gardener. In 1921 she purchased three acres of land at Mooroolbark and built her first home from local and second hand materials. This home was named Sonning after Gertrude Jekyll's Deanery Garden of the same name, which she had visited in England.
In 1922 Walling purchased a further 18 acres of land adjacent to Sonning. The houses she built became the village of Bickleigh Vale. Between the 1920s and 1960s Walling's commissions included designing the lily pond for Coombe Cottage, Dame Nellie Melba's residence in Coldstream, Vic.; Durrol for Mrs Stanley Allen, Mount Macedon, Vic.; and the Cruden Farm garden for Mrs Keith Murdoch (now Dame Elisabeth), Langwarrin, Vic. She also undertook commissions in Hobart, Tasmania, and designed villages at Port Pirie, South Australia (never completed) and Mount Kembla, New South Wales, for Broken Hill Associated Smelters Pty Ltd.
During this period Walling wrote four books: Gardens in Australia (1943), Cottage and Garden in Australia (1947), A Gardener's Log (1948) and The Australian Roadside (1952). She wrote articles for The Australian Women's Mirror, The Australian Home Builder and The Australian Home Beautiful. In a letter held by the State Library of Victoria's Edna Walling Collection (La Trobe Australian Manuscripts), Walling declines an invitation to join the Australian Society of Authors by saying:
Walling's ABC Radio talks include On Making a Garden (1941), Improving the Farm and Curing Erosion and The Farmers' Friends (1951). In 1967, Walling moved to a cottage - 'Bendles' - at Buderim, Queensland. She died there in 1973.
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Born Dec. 4 1895. Cf. The vision of Edna Walling : garden plans 1920-1951 / Trisha Dixon and Jennie Churchill. Hawthorn, Vic : Bloomings Books, 1998.
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WALLING, EDNA MARGARET (1895-1973), garden designer, was born on 4 December 1895 at York, England, second daughter of William Walling, furniture dealer's clerk, and his wife Harriet Margaret, née Goff. Edna attended school at the Convent of Notre Dame, Plymouth, Devon. She later recalled her fondness for the English countryside which she had enjoyed exploring with her father. He also steered her towards the practical arts. Arriving in New Zealand in 1912 with her family, she worked for a short time as a maid on a property in the country and began a nursing course at Christchurch. About 1914 the Wallings moved to Melbourne where William became warehouse director with Toledo-Berkel Pty Ltd.
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