Photography: Erik Holt
Edna Walling is an icon in the Australian horticultural community. Her garden designs for some of the most prestigious homes built in the 20th century live on and are also testament to her talents. Home Beautiful benefited from her skills. Her knowledge of garden design featured in house stories over the past century. She also contributed as a columnist on the magazine for over 20 years.
Edna’s monthly articles featured in HB from 1926 and they introduced readers to a whole new way of looking at garden design. Through her imagination and creative vision, she showed people how they could be more inventive and involved in the design of their outdoor spaces, all while advising them to plan out their garden on paper as an architect would plan a home.
“I love all things most gardeners abhor … I like the whole thing to be as wild as possible, so that you have to fight your way through in places” – Edna Walling
“Working out the solution of one’s own problems is the very spice of gardening and in presenting a plan it is not thought that it will be copied in detail, but that the enquiring reader will perhaps find in it suggestions … on paper before the work is put in hand,” wrote Edna in a feature for Home Beautiful. She demonstrated this skill in her charming illustrated plans, which appeared alongside her photographs in many detailed articles about building the 10-hectare village, Bickleigh Vale.
‘Downderry’ cottage in Edna Walling’s Bickleigh Vale
In the softest shade of pink, Downderry in Bickleigh Vale was constructed for Edna Walling’s mother. This really is a fairytale plot. The pretty heritage cottage is surrounded by striking structures of ancient trees. These include copper beach, hornbeam, scarlet oak as well as an impressive English elm. The delicate groundcover of flowers and the rambling garden beds are also full of mixed plantings.
‘Badgers Wood’ in Edna Walling’s Bickleigh Vale
Built in 1937, and sympathetically extended in 1980 by film producer Simon Wincer, Badgers Wood blends original Edna Walling design elements with lush garden ‘rooms’. Local stone, signature low-set windows and a high-pitched roofline draw the landscape inside the home.
Under the current owners’ care, vibrant seasonal plantings join elms, eucalypts, hawthorns as well as heritage blooms. These keep Edna’s vision alive while adding fresh layers of beauty to this cherished home.
‘The Barn’ in Edna Walling’s Bickleigh Vale
This cottage in Bickleigh Vale, which peeks through the shrubs in a delightfully enchanting way, was originally built by Edna Walling for her friend Blanche Sharpe. It started out as a barn and garage, then a bedroom and bathroom were added. Edna herself moved here in 1951 once her own home, Sonning, had been sold.
The first house built in Bickleigh Vale
Edna’s five-page story on Sonning, the home she built first in the village of Bickleigh Vale, featured in Home Beautiful in 1926. It was an extraordinary accomplishment and her legacy still lives on today. Below is an extract from the first of many stories about her ‘joyous adventure’.
Edna’s building column
The task of being my own builder was an enforced one, for the hope of possessing a cot in the hills was likely to be postponed indefinitely by the very high cost of labour and the expense of carting material to the spot where it was needed – a bare hour’s train journey from Melbourne, but right in the open countryside on a hillside. The more I thought of doing the job myself, the more I liked it, and with the idea of recommending the building of a country cottage to readers of The Home Beautiful I have jotted down the following notes:
First of all, of course, I laid down my ground plan, having quite definite ideas about what I wanted, but leaving open certain possibilities for progressive alterations. Then came the selection and collection of material. I considered dressed timber, hewn slabs, sawn logs, and finally decided upon stone. From the moment of discovering that I could work in that most picturesque of all building material I fell victim to the fascinating pastime of ‘collecting stones’. Now, to be perfectly frank, I must say that there are certain drawbacks, which make me hesitate to honestly recommend to my fellow-readers the building of their own cottages in stone … My training in outdoor work as a garden designer … had rendered me indifferent to an unusual amount of ‘dirty work’ and the knocking about of the hands, which the handling of rough stones entails.
Edna Walling’s best gardening advice
In her Letters to Garden Lovers, a monthly column that featured in Home Beautiful for two decades, Edna helped everyday gardeners with her designs, practical gardening ideas as well as plant recommendations. She was also a keen photographer and her photographs graced numerous pages in her features. Here are a few of our favourite entries.
“Dear Gardeners, have you ever noticed how a garden that needs very little attention is so often much more charming and restful than one in which much labour is expended in its upkeep?” – Edna Walling, 1937
“Dear Gardeners, I have just noticed that the Fairies’ Thimbles are in bloom. It is always such a delight to observe the excited enjoyment of children on seeing them for the first time.” – Edna Walling, 1938
“Funny things, gardens. I think they like to be discovered, not shown off … I, for one, prefer the type of garden where as much permanent ground cover as possible clothes the earth … Where there are little surprises invented by Nature, patches of self-sown foxgloves, little colonies of that adorable alpine violet, which will so obligingly clothe the pathway’s edge.” – Edna Walling, 1944
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