Edwin Ashby

Edwin Ashby (2 November 1861 – 8 January 1941)[1] was an Adelaide based Australian property developer and a noted malacologist interested in chitons[1] and ornithologist.

[2] He was a founding member of the South Australian Ornithological Association (SAOA) in 1899, and of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) in 1901 for which he served as president 1926.

In 1901, Ashby began an extensive formal English garden beside the main house.

[5] In 1911, Ashby expanded the Wittunga farming operation when he acquired a nearby parcel called 'Watiparinga'.

She eventually donated Watiparinga to the National Trust of South Australia in 1957, which now operates it as the Watiparinga Reserve[6] From the 1970s Ashby's granddaughter, Enid Lucy Robertson, began a project to regenerate the land, and in 1984 she wrote the Watiparinga Reserve Management Plan which became a prototype for other small to medium nature reserves in urban areas.