Edna Walling, Garden Designer and Bickleigh Vale Village part 1

<p> EDNA WALLING & BICKLEIGH VALE</p> <p>Part 1 </p> <p>Edna Walling was one of Australia’s most influential garden designers of the 20th century but I daresay, not too many people have heard of her.</p> Edna was Walling was born in 1896, in Yorkshire and grew up in the village of Bickleigh  Devon, England but came to Australia at 17 years of age.   Edna was influenced by her father and studied landscape design at Burnley Horticultural College in Melbourne.  Walling was awarded her government certificate in horticulture in December 1917, and after some years jobbing as a gardener she commenced her own landscape design practice in the 1920s. Her plans from the 1920s and 1930s show a strong architectural framework with 'low stone walls, wide pergolas and paths – always softened with a mantle of greenery'.   While doing some garden research I happened on one of her most famous creations called Bickleigh Vale in the Melbourne suburb of Mooroolbark in the foothills of the Dandenongs. <ul><li>She just happened on some land while out bushwalking and convinced a bank manager to lend her money to buy the land and build her first house 'Sonning.'</li> </ul> <a href='https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G3rirh48tpY/YSSe_sxtoRI/AAAAAAAAk3A/72B-9b7IDR0lPuBNMVfR7EmYOPF11kovgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2016/Trisha%2BDixon%2Bin%2Bgarden.jpg'></a>Who better to talk about them is someone who has researched Edna Walling for the last 40 years. I'll be talking with Trisha Dixon, garden author and photographer and sometime tour leader of gardens.   Trisha mentions that she found that actual village that this was modelled on, the real 'Bickleigh Vale ; in Devon, in England. Listen to parts 1 & 2 of the podcast below.    A quote from <a href='https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/91150702456773281/2795479185155639280'>https://www.bickleighvalevillage.com.au/properties.html</a>  is this quote  In the early 1920s Edna Walling acquired land at Mooroolbark where she built a house for herself - 'Sonning'. Here she lived and worked, establishing her nursery