Edna Walling was a keen photographer and took many images of her gardens, and her life at Bickleigh Vale. Many of these are in the State Library of Victoria, however the Yarra Ranges Regional Museum in Lilydale has the negatives of several interesting, and intriguing, photos.
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To have a look at the collection, visit to website of the museum - click here.

​The image below is an example. It show Lorna Fielden who edited some of Edna Walling's books, with her cat in her cottage Lynton Lee.
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It is just on 100 years since Edna Walling bought the land on which she built her home Sonning and established a nursery as a base for her work as a landscape designer. And 100 years since she started "devising an adventure in rural development", a community of gardeners living in an English-style village. In 1923 she purchased land adjacent to her own property that she subdivided and sold to people wishing to be involved in her vision. She called the village Bickleigh Vale.
I wonder how she would see her legacy a century later.

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Sonning, 2022.

Bickleigh Vale Rd, May 2022.

This decade, the 2020s, The Friends of Bickleigh Vale are celebrating the centenary of the village established by the  landscape designer. Edna Walling. This blog will focus on her vision and her legacy and many things in between. I also hope to have entries exploring some of the challenges we are facing as time, and climate change impact on our gardens.   
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