Elsie Cornish

Elsie Marion Cornish was a South Australian landscape gardener and was born in 1870 in Glenelg, South Australia.

Life and influences The daughter of Samuel Cornish (an ironmonger) and Agnes (née Kirkpatrick), Cornish was educated in North Adelaide and trained herself in landscape design. She began her career as a professional gardener around 1916, gaining an interest in landscape gardening and design. As her career progressed through the 1910s, she gained a loyal cliéntele.

Cornish lived and had her plant nursery at her family's home in Palmer Place, North Adelaide, where Henry Stuckey and Edmund William Wright, Adelaide architects prominent in the mid-1800s, had once lived.

She died on 20 October 1946. and opened in 1941, the Pioneer Women's Memorial Garden in Adelaide, South Australia is one of Cornish's most significant commissions. Also of note is her design of the University of Adelaide escarpment (1934–46). Her employment at the university was on the personal recommendation of Walter Hervey Bagot, a prominent Adelaide architect of the time. She was still employed by the university on her unexpected passing in 1946.