Edna Margaret Walling (4 December 1896 – 8 August 1973) was one of Australia's most influential landscape designers. Early years and migration Walling was born in Yorkshire and grew up in the village of Bickleigh in Devon, England, second daughter of William Walling, a furniture dealer's clerk, and Harriet Margaret, née Goff. Her father encouraged her exploration and love of the English countryside and taught her woodworking. Edna was schooled at the Convent of Notre Dame, Plymouth, Devon. When she was fourteen years old the family emigrated to New Zealand and in 1914 moved with her family to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia where her father had gone in advance in 1911. Training With the encouragement of her mother, Walling was awarded her government certificate in horticulture at Burnley College in December 1917, and after some years as a jobbing gardener she commenced her own landscape design practice in the 1920s. Garden construction rather than horticulture interested her most, and she sought work from Melbourne's architects, and secured commissions including several from the fashionable architect Marcus Martin. She "went on to design some significant Arts and Crafts gardens". Bickleigh Vale In the 1920s, as Australia's first woman land developer, Walling began to create a village at Mooroolbark on the outskirts of Melbourne called Bickleigh Vale. With its unique collection of charming houses and gardens Bickleigh Vale is one of her most acclaimed achievements. It was designed to be 'the nucleus of an English village' and she built the first cottage, named after the village of Sonning on the River Thames in England, as her own home, though it had to be completely rebuilt after a disastrous fire. She sold subdivisions of the land only to people who were prepared to accept designs for a cottage and garden prepared by her. Garden design In 1935 Ellis Stones built a wall for her. Recognizing his ability—which she called 'a rare thing this gift for placing stones' – she suggested that he work for her. She gave him a free hand to create walls, outcrops, pools and paths in her gardens at some of Melbourne's finest homes which assisted in establishing a local garden tradition. Their best collaboration was seen in a free-form swimming pool and outcrop, built in 1939-40 for Edith Hughes-Jones at Olinda, Victoria Her design practice grew and she worked across Australia, in Perth, Hobart, Sydney, and Buderim in Queensland. Her Victorian