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A famous garden

Markdale's Garden is acknowledged as one of the great country gardens of Australia. Begun in the 1920's, the garden was re-designed in 1949 by the pioneer of Australian landscape gardening Edna Walling.

It features in many books and magazines on Australian gardening. The accompanying pictures attempt to convey a glimpse, which will entice you to see the whole five acres.

To spend a weekend staying in the Stone House bed and breakfast accommodation , the original homestead on Markdale, with access to this beautiful and mature garden, is to be refreshed and renewed. A wonderful way to have the garden all to yourself.

Edna Walling's signature

The pergola of blue and white wisteria, the stunning golden and weeping elms, the profusion of roses, the stone-walled garden and the sweeping lawn down to a small lake are all part of the Walling signature.

Walling was determined to use the glorious natural scenery of paddocks and hills to advantage, removing many of the existing hedges in the process. Today, silver birch, aspens, pinoaks, hawthorns, golden elms, golden ash and claret ash, spireas, viburnums and native eucalypts shelter and frame the garden without obscuring the view. For more information about seasons in the garden see the Markdale ecology diary .

Contemporary photographs taken by Walling in the Markdale garden in the 40s can be found on the ABC site here.

Geoff Ashton Snr describes the process of getting Edna Walling involved in the garden in a book written in 1980 by his nephew, Chris Ashton, as follows:

"We decided to do up the garden in 1949. We started by putting up a low stone wall in front of the house, but it ended up about six feet high. It wasn't satisfactory, so I said to Janet [Geoff's wife], 'I think we need to get somebody in to advise us, somenone who knows where they're going, who can visualise what it will look like, and can work out the levels and so on.'

That's when we brought in Edna Walling. The Markdale garden made her reputation in NSW, because she wasn't very well known here. Janet had seeen a garden she'd done in the Western District of Victoria. She had liked it, so she wrote to Edna Walling who wrote back that she'd love to do a garden in NSW.

Edna Walling arrived and seemed intrigued. She picked on the two big trees in front of the house and said, 'We'll build the garden round them.'

I said, 'Well, I don't see how we can do it unless we can get some good workmen who know how you want things done.'

She said, 'I've just had an awful row with Hammond. I'll try him.' (Hammond maintained a lot of Toorak gardens and later did the job for the Olympic Games [the Games in Melbourne in 1956]). Hammond agreeed to send up a couple of men for six weeks. We couldn't do everything Edna Walling wanted. She wanted to put in a kidney-shaped swimming pool and a cover over the underground tank. Hammond said that if he did the swimming pool and underground tank, he wouldn't have time to do anything else [both were eventually done later - the pool 30+ years later by Geoff's son]. So we decided to concentrate on the garden, and they built the stone walls and did a lot of the levelling and grading and so forth. ... She also changed the driveway from the northerly side of the house to the westerly side." 

 There are some more photos of the garden here.

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| The property | The history | 1930's Polo | Directions | Tariffs | Special events | Food |