Edwin Ashby (2 November 1861 – 8 January 1941) was an

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

based Australian

property developer Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw land and the sale of developed land or parcels to others. R ...

and a noted

malacologist Malacology is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (mollusks or molluscs), the second-largest phylum of animals in terms of described species after the arthropods. Mollusks include snails and slugs, clams, ...

interested in

chitons Chitons () are marine molluscs of varying size in the class Polyplacophora (), formerly known as Amphineura. About 940 extant and 430 fossil species are recognized. They are also sometimes known as gumboots or sea cradles or coat-of-mail sh ...

Winckworth R. (1942). "Obituary. Edwin Ashby, 1861-1941". ''

Proceedings of the Malacological Society of London The ''Journal of Molluscan Studies'' is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the Malacological Society of London, covering research in malacology.

'' 25(1): 2-4
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and ornithologist. He was a founding member of the South Australian Ornithological Association (SAOA) in 1899, and of the

Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union The Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), now part of BirdLife Australia, was Australia's largest non-government, non-profit, bird conservation organisation. It was founded in 1901 to promote the study and conservation of the native b ...

(RAOU) in 1901 for which he served as president 1926. The avian genus ''

Ashbyia The gibberbird (''Ashbyia lovensis'') is a species of chat within the passerine birds. Taxonomy This species, also formerly known as the desert chat, is endemic to Australia and the only species within the genus ''Ashbyia''.Pizzey, Graham; Doyle ...

'' (represented by the gibberbird ''Ashbyia lovensis'') was named for him by

Gregory Mathews Gregory Macalister Mathews CBE FRSE FZS FLS (10 September 1876 – 27 March 1949) was an Australian-born amateur ornithologist who spent most of his later life in England. Life He was born in Biamble in New South Wales the son of Robert H. M ...

. Ashby owned a farm, which he called 'Wittunga', in the Adelaide Hills. In 1901, he began a formal

English garden The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...

beside the main house, which was later developed botanically by his son, Arthur Keith Ashby; his son donated to garden to the State of

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

in 1965, and it was opened to the public in 1975 as Wittunga Botanic Garden. In 1911, Ashby expanded the Wittunga farming operation when he acquired a nearby parcel, his 'Watiparinga' land. In the late 1950s, daughter Alison Marjorie Ashby began planting thousands of seedlings of Australian plants in Watiparinga. She eventually donated Watiparinga to the National Trust of South Australia in 1957, which now operates it as the Watiparinga Reserve; the reserve was added to the Register of the National Estate in 1996.

References

Botanists with author abbreviations Australian malacologists Australian ornithologists 1861 births 1941 deaths {{Australia-ornithologist-stub