H&G INSIDER
74 / AUSTRALIAN HOUSE & GARDEN
Embracing the virtues of relaxed, liveable gardens,
this landscape designer was a pioneer in her field,
writes Chris Pearson.
EDNA WALLING
Y
oung Edna Walling (pictured
above right) began studying at
Melbourne’s Burnley School of
Horticulture in 1916. Graduating the
following year, her big break came when
an architect asked her to create a garden
for a house he had designed. Walling’s
reputation flourished and by the mid
1920s, she was the go-to person for
pergolas and dry-stone walls, designing
gardens for Elisabeth Murdoch, Sir Frank
Packer and Dame Nellie Melba.
Her modus operandi was to take
existing features such as the contours
of property, rocks and trees, sculpt
them, and add architectural features for
structure. These she softened with dense
planting. Dry-stone walls, stone steps,
pergolas, rock pools and meandering
paths were signatures, while more
affluent gardens featured classical
colonnades and archways.
Landscape designer Paul Bangay has
had a long association with Wallinggardens, not all of it good. Early in his
career, he innocently levelled one in Toorak
(“fortunately, there weren’t too many
original features left,” he says). He has
since made amends by restoring three.
“She had a wonderful sense of
architecture,” says Bangay. “It was gutsy- Australia had never seen that. Her
sense of scale and rock work were genius.
And it’s amazing how many of these
features remain today.” With its sweeping
staircase, Mawarra (pictured above), in
the Dandenongs, is a favourite.
Against this hardscaping, Walling
combined natives with exotics, then an
unconventional marriage that marked
the beginning of a truly Australian style
of gardening, says Bangay.
Also in the 1920s, she designed a whole
village, buying 1.6ha of undulating bush at
Mooroolbark, near Mt Dandenong, and
subdividing it. She thinned out the natives,
retaining the finest gums and blackwoods
and built 16 cottages in the English Arts
and Crafts style. Then she planted exotics,
such as oaks, cherry trees and hawthorns.
“Walking into Bickleigh Vale village
the first time was amazing,” says Trisha
Dixon, who has cowritten two books on
Walling. “It has a perfect sense of scale
and intimacy.”
Over the years, Walling’s gardens
became less structured, with boulders,
rock outcrops and more native plantings.
“How pompous, imagining that we can
do better than to re-establish the most
desirable of the native flora peculiar
to the district,” she wrote in 1948.
In 1967, seeking a warmer climate, she
moved to Buderim, Queensland. By that
time, she enjoyed a formidable profile,
having written myriad magazine columns
and books includingGardens in Australia
(1943), Cottage and Garden in Australia
(1947), A Gardener’s Log(1948) andThe
Australian Roadside(1952). Walling
passed away in Buderim in 1973. #
http://www.ednawalling.net.au.DESIGN MOMENT
WALLING’S
LEGACY“Walling encouraged a relaxed
style of horticulture; gardens
to live in rather than for
show,” says author Trisha
Dixon. She sowed the seeds of
water conservation, using
drought-tolerant plants and
dense groundcovers. About
a quarter of her 300 designs
remain, including Mawarra
and Bickleigh Vale in Victoria,
and Markdale in NSW.Photography from State Library of Victoria (portrait) and courtesy of Trisha Dixon (Mawarra).