Famous Women Gardeners

Lesson 5: EDNA WALLING, Australian Horticulturist

GARDEN DESIGN

Excerpts from a preface article Edna Walling wrote for the book "Australian Gardening of Today Illustrated" - Arranged and edited by the Editor of "Australian Home Beautiful" {Miss Edna Walling], printed by The Sun News-Pictorial, Melbourne, no date but I imagine some time in the 1940s.

"The Design of the Garden" by Edna Wallling

She writes in the opening paragraph: "Numbers of charming and perfectly satisfactory gardens have been planned by their owners, and it should hearten many to observe that an extensive knowledge of horticulture is not essential in the design of the garden".

She goes on to suggest to the reader not to rush into hiring a professional landscape gardener. Rather than call in the "first man jack who comes along," take your precious ground and hand it back as an inferior garden to one you could have designed for yourself, first think long and hard about what you want and imagine how your garden should look and grow. But if the garden owner finds it is impossible to draw up plans or visualize, she suggests calling in someone who is able to take the garden owners' ideas and thoughts and materialize them in the forms of plans on paper and, if needed, do the physical work of laying out the garden.

Quotation: "Before thought is given to planting, a careful survey must be made of all the natural advantages of the site, the restrictions to which the designer must adapt himself, and the architectural design of the house".

One suggestion in the article that intrigued me is very revolutionary and brave as Miss Walling was never blessed by her own children:

"Some children show a great deal of imagination in garden making, and if a child likes a garden it is generally something out of the ordinary. For this reason it seems a pity that a little education and house design is not given to every child".

"It is a most elusive thing, this matter of design in the garden, and it is not always the fervent horticulturist who achieves it. It is more often the person who builds a garden for the quiet peace and mental refreshment he hopes to achieve therein." She continues to point out that there is a need of a sense of proportion and certain basic horticulture knowledge and warns: "When Winter comes, laying bare so much of the construction, it is sometimes a little distressing to look out upon a garden that is rather elementary in design when stripped of foliage and flowers."

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