In 1989 Bickleigh Vale joined Victoria's Garden Scheme where open days would be held (with the current owner's consent) and people can pay to look through the village and it's wonderful gardens. Today, seven of the houses opened for us: Badgers Wood, Devon Cottage, Downderry, Mistover, The Sheilan, The Barn and Wimborne.

I was there with Carolyn, her mother Kath, her sister Denise and her neice Caroline.

So what is Bickleigh Vale Village? Where are your photos? All is below here ......

Having completed her horticulture studies in 1917, she worked as a gardener at Dame Nellie Melba's Coombe Cottage at Lilydale and whilst out on a walk in 1919 she came across a 3 acre area of land in Mooroolbark at the foot of Mount Dandenong and she came up with the idea of building a cottage that was pleasing to the eye and cost no more than a conventional house.

In 1920, she completed that house that she called Sonning after an Oxfordshire village in England. She used local quarry stone for the floors, walls and chimney, packing cases for lining board, saplings for pergolas. She selected trees to give an appearance of completion and restfulness.

A couple of years later, an 18 acre allotment next to Sonning came up for sale. Edna borrowed heavily and bought it and named it Bickleigh Vale after a Devonshire Village. She split the land up into 1 and 2 acre allotments that she sold to people she liked with the proviso that they'd agree to a cottage and garden of Edna's making.

She oversaw the construction of 16 cottages and gardens between the early 1920s and into the 1940s. By 1934 seven properties had been completed and they were separated by simple farm fences with picket gates for neighbourly access - these are still used throughout the village.

During 1936, Sonning was destroyed by fire along with all of Edna's possessions. She immediately started to plan Sonning II amidst the ruins.

Edna dominated garden design in Victoria between the 1920s and the 1950s - she wrote books, gave public lectures, held open days at Sonning and became sought after as a garden designer by Melbourne's Establishment. She designed city and country gardens in Victoria and some in New South Wales.

In 1951 Edna decided to move from Sonning as it had become too large for her and moved a new cottage (called The Barn) which was to be her last home in the village.

To Edna the growth of suburbia around her village became unbearable and she finally made the painful decision to leave Mooroolbark in 1967. At 71 years of age, she moved to Buderim, Queensland where she started a new home and garden and she lived there until her death in 1973.

Bickleigh Vale shows how Edna blended native and exotic plants and built collages nestling into a landscape characterised by repeated plantings of a wide variety of her preferred groundcovers, shrubs and trees. When residents replant today, they do it with one eye on her writings so that character is preserved.

a young Edna Walling

an older version of same