Vic Branch: Vic Branch AGM 2022 followed by lecture

Edna Walling – an unusual life by Sara Hardy.

Time: 6.00 start – drinks & nibble available from 5:30 pm.

Venue: Mueller Hall, National Herbarium of Victoria, South Yarra.

Cost: $20 members, $25 non-members.

Bookings: at Trybooking.

Enquiries: Lynda Entwisle – M: 0466 925 370

The author will be available to sign copies of her book after the lecture. Please bring. Cash if you wish to purchase a copy.

Edna Walling c.1927 by Francie Young.

Further information:

Edna Walling‘s trademark landscape features include fine flights of steps, flagstone paths, dry-stone walls and elegant sweeping boarders. She self-built her own cottage and created Bickleigh Vale Village in Mooroolbark. Edna Walling had an extraordinary career, she was a landscape designer, gardener, photographer, builder, architect, journalist, author, sketcher, watercolourist, conservationist – and eco-visionary. In short, she was an Artist. Her work, which spans from the 1920s to 1960s, is still celebrated in books, exhibitions and existent gardens. Yet who was Edna Walling? This talk explores the life and character of the woman behind those fabulous achievements – from the influences of a childhood spent in Devon, England – to some of the key friendships that helped her achieve so much.

Sara Hardy is a playwright, biographer, novelist and former actor. Sara was inspired to write her first biography, The Unusual Life of Edna Walling, after portraying the famous Australian landscape designer in a theatre performance. Her manuscript won the Peter Blazey Award for Life Writing. Sara’s second biography, Dame Joan Hammond – Love & Music, celebrates the Australian opera singer and golf champion. Sara recently published her first novel, A Secretive Life, which includes a cameo appearance from Edna Walling. Her books can be ordered from bookshops and online.