'A Monument to Enterprise': Frank Walker and Sons, Nurserymen and Florists 1874-1941

Frank Walker was an Englishman who immigrated to Tasmania in 1874 and became a highly successful and well regarded horticulturist and nurseryman. For eight decades he established and ran various horticultural enterprises in northern Tasmania, including a nursery at the Sand.hill in Launceston and an orchard and nursery property at Lalla near Lilydale. He was also heavily involved in civic planting around the island and sponsored and assisted many beautification projects, including the Pioneer Avenue planted along the Midland Highway between Launceston and Hobart and sections of the Cataract Gorge. By the First World War, his orchards and flower gardens at Lalla attracted large numbers of tourists drawn by the magnificent displays of trees and flowers. He presided over a family of seven children, all of who became heavily involved in his businesses. Despite Frank Walker's significant contribution to Tasmanian horticulture in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, little is known about his early life, which was undoubtedly the inspiration for his numerous horticultural enterprises and activities in Tasmania.