Edith Macpherson Park: Testament to a Pioneering Biodynamic Farmer

Summary in the original language of the document

A public park is a fitting testament to a pioneer biodynamic and organic farmer. Edith Macpherson Park is a public park, located in Namur Street, Noble Park, a south-east suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia). Edith Macpherson Park offers visitors a quiet, green, grassy, leafy refuge in suburban Melbourne. The park has a nicely appointed and maintained children’s playground, as well as a public barbeque. Edith Ileen Macpherson (1898-1984) bequeathed the park land to the Dandenong City Council. In life, she was always known as ‘Ileen’, her middle name. Her modest weatherboard house had been purpose-designed and built to accommodate her own special needs. This disability-access house served her for three decades, but in her will she specified that it be razed to the ground leaving no trace - and so it was. The playground of Edith Macpherson Park occupies the site of the demolished house. Ileen Macpherson and Ernesto Genoni’s Demeter Farm operated for two decades (1934-1954). Ernesto and Ileen were both members of the Rudolf Steiner’s Experimental Circle of Anthroposophic Farmers and Gardeners which was headquartered in Dornach, Switzerland. An imperative is to correct the name of the park from ‘Edith Macpherson Park’ to ‘Ileen Macpherson Park’. The Park ought to bear the name which the donor bore all of her life - rather than a name by which she was never known, albeit that ‘Edith Ileen Macpherson’ appears on her birth certificate, death certificate, and her will. This simple name rectification would properly honour the life and generosity of the donor who pioneered of biodynamic and organic farming in Australia.