The Best Gardens in Melbourne & Victoria to Visit This Spring

Victoria has long earned its Garden State nickname, with everything from grand 19th-century estates and botanic collections to private gardens, native landscapes and flower-filled country properties. Spring brings wisteria, roses, rhododendrons and wildflowers into full colour, but the best gardens in Melbourne and Victoria are worth visiting year-round, with autumn foliage, summer blooms and beautifully structured winter landscapes giving every season its moment.

For an easy day outdoors, follow a walking trail, pack a picnic or plan a road trip around one of Victoria’s great garden destinations. From Melbourne icons to spectacular regional estates, these are the best gardens in Melbourne and Victoria to visit now.

The Best Gardens in Melbourne

Cruden Farm

Few gardens carry a personality quite like Cruden Farm. Dame Elisabeth Murdoch spent more than 80 years shaping this 100-acre Langwarrin estate, building on Edna Walling’s early plans with longtime gardener Michael Morrison. More than 100 lemon-scented gums line its famous driveway, leading towards the Walled Garden, flower-filled Picking Garden, sweeping lawns and the lake Dame Elisabeth created in 1987. Beautiful without feeling overly manicured, Cruden’s real magic is that it still feels like a garden somebody loved, worked in and kept changing.

Entry via Cranhaven Road, 60 Cranbourne Road, Langwarrin

Rippon Lea Estate

It’s astonishing how quickly Elsternwick disappears inside Rippon Lea Estate. Seven hectares of Victorian pleasure gardens surround the 1868 mansion, with winding paths leading between sweeping lawns, an ornamental lake, grotto and waterfall, heritage orchard and one of the Southern Hemisphere’s few surviving Victorian ferneries. Frederick Sargood was serious about his horticulture, even installing an elaborate underground irrigation system. Bring a picnic and give the fernery proper time; beneath its palms, ferns and trickling streams, suburbia feels remarkably far away.

192 Hotham Street, Elsternwick

Carlton Gardens

Carlton Gardens was designed to make an entrance. Reworked by architect Joseph Reed and horticulturist William Sangster for the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition, its southern garden still follows the ceremonial plan visitors encountered more than 140 years ago. Tree-lined avenues converge on the 10-metre Hochgurtel Fountain, with formal parterres, ornamental lakes and the Royal Exhibition Building’s dome rising beyond. Together, the building and gardens have held UNESCO World Heritage status since 2004. This is Marvellous Melbourne, still written into the landscape.

1-111 Carlton Street, Carlton

St Kilda Botanical Gardens

St Kilda Botanical Gardens has been giving the neighbourhood a greener side since 1859. More than 800 mature trees fill its six hectares, alongside the Alister Clark Rose Garden, sub-tropical conservatory, ornamental pond and solar-powered Rain Man fountain. There are giant chessboards and picnic lawns for less serious pursuits, while the newly redeveloped Port Phillip EcoCentre now houses Australia’s first Citizen Science Lab. Heritage-listed, leafy and pleasingly eccentric, it’s one of St Kilda’s loveliest places to disappear for an hour.

11 Herbert Street, St Kilda 

Fitzroy Gardens

Laid out in 1859, Fitzroy Gardens still wears its Victorian bones beautifully. Century-old elms form great leafy avenues through lawns, fountains and flowerbeds, while wonderfully eccentric landmarks appear along the way: the carved Fairies’ Tree, miniature Tudor Village, 1864 Bandstand and River God Fountain, Melbourne’s oldest surviving public artwork. The Spanish Mission-style Conservatory changes its floral display five times a year, and since 2025, Hugh Allen’s three-hatted Yiaga has made the gardens a serious dining destination too. History is everywhere here, but Fitzroy Gardens has never felt stuck in it.

Wellington Parade, East Melbourne

Royal Botanic Gardens

Established in 1846, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne packs extraordinary botanical variety into 38 hectares. More than 8,500 plant species fill its lawns, lakes and 23-plus living collections, but the joy is in choosing your own route through them. Cross the bridges of Fern Gully, climb Guilfoyle’s Volcano for city views, wander through the newly refreshed Sensory Garden or simply claim a patch beneath one of the great old trees. Almost 180 years on, Melbourne still hasn’t found a better garden for losing an afternoon.

Birdwood Avenue, Melbourne

Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne

For native flora on an epic scale, Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne is in a league of its own. The award-winning Australian Garden transforms a former sand mine into a bold contemporary landscape, with more than 100,000 plants across 1,900 varieties. Its sculptural Red Sand Garden is the showstopper, before paths lead through eucalypts, grasslands and themed collections into 300 hectares of remnant bushland beyond. There are more than 10 kilometres of walking tracks, too, making this one worth giving half a day.

Ballarto Road and Botanic Drive, Cranbourne

Alfred Nicholas Memorial Garden

Alfred Nicholas Memorial Garden is one of the Dandenongs at its most theatrical. Created by pharmaceutical magnate Alfred Nicholas in the 1930s, the 13-hectare garden tumbles downhill through towering mountain ash, sweeping terraces, rock walls and mature exotic trees to an ornamental lake and much-photographed boathouse. Autumn is its great performance, with ginkgos turning buttery yellow beside the water while maples and beeches burn red and copper. Aim for mid-April to early May for the strongest colour.

1A Sherbrooke Road, Sherbrooke

Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden

Two very different gardening worlds meet at Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden. Across 50 hectares, Victoria’s premier cool-climate garden holds more than 15,000 rhododendrons, 12,000 azaleas and 250,000 daffodils among lakes, towering trees and views across the Yarra Valley. Then comes the curveball: the permanent Chelsea Australian Garden, a 20-times-larger re-creation of Australia’s 2013 Chelsea Flower Show Best in Show winner, planted with 15,000 natives around a waterfall, billabong and monumental waratah. Come in any season; this garden was never built for a single bloom.

The Georgian Road, Olinda

The Best Gardens in Victoria

Wombat Park Estate

Wombat Park Estate is the garden you plan around. Established in 1854, this privately held Daylesford estate has spent more than 170 years accumulating extraordinary trees, from towering oaks and cedars to bunya pines and a vast Lawson’s cypress. Later Arts and Crafts landscaping introduced its elm avenue, tapestry hedge and sunken croquet lawn, while the garden gradually loosens into the surrounding farmland. Public openings are rare, which makes walking beneath those old canopies feel like being let in on a very good secret.

Open two days only this spring, 31 October to 1 November

Wombat Park Estate, Daylesford

Wombat Hill Botanic Gardens

At the highest point in Daylesford, an extinct volcano has spent the past 160 years growing into one of Victoria’s loveliest botanic gardens. Wombat Hill is all towering conifers, old elms, fern-lined paths and enormous country views, with Gold Rush tunnels still running beneath the soil. Climb the Pioneer Memorial Tower, wander the newly restored central gardens, then follow the smell of coffee and fresh pastry to Wombat Hill House.

Central Springs Road, Daylesford 

The Garden at Broughton Hall

Thirty years ago, The Garden at Broughton Hall was a paddock. Today, David Musker and Philip Hunter’s Jindivick creation spills down a ridge above Tarago Reservoir in a sequence of clipped hedges, rose-filled terraces, gravel paths and densely planted borders. Antique gates, obelisks and columns punctuate the greenery, while long sightlines pull the Gippsland hills straight into the composition. Follow the silver-birch drive in, then finish at Musker’s Rare Plant Nursery.

Sitchu Tip: Open seasonally, it’s a garden worth timing the trip for.

125 Palmer Road, Jindivick

Cloudehill Gardens

Cloudehill Gardens has nearly a century of horticultural history growing through it. Once a Dandenongs flower farm and nursery, the five-acre property still holds beeches, azaleas and Japanese maples planted as far back as the 1920s. Since 1992, Jeremy Francis has built around those survivors, creating some 25 Arts and Crafts-inspired garden rooms that move from clipped terraces and topiary to exuberant perennial borders and bulb meadows. Finish at Seasons Restaurant or raid the Diggers Garden Shop for the trip home.

89 Olinda-Monbulk Road, Olinda

Karwarra Australian Native Botanic Garden

At Karwarra Australian Native Botanic Garden, Australian plants get the entire stage. More than 1,400 species fill two hectares designed with winding paths, raised beds and an original rockery by Ellis “Rocky” Stones, Edna Walling’s longtime collaborator. Look for rare plants and important boronia and waratah conservation collections, then follow the path into undisturbed bushland for orchids and wildflowers in season. The excellent native nursery makes leaving empty-handed considerably harder.

1190-1196 Mount Dandenong Tourist Road, Kalorama

Geelong Botanic Gardens

Australia’s fourth-oldest botanic garden has never stopped evolving. Established in 1851, Geelong Botanic Gardens now opens with the striking 21st Century Garden, its sculptural bottle trees, rockwork and drought-tolerant plants designed for a much drier future. Beyond it, the timeline runs backwards through grand 19th-century trees, heritage roses and an extraordinary sunken glasshouse dating to the 1860s. Old carriageways still trace the grounds, while giant redwoods, ginkgo and Chilean wine palms tower overhead. One small garden, nearly two centuries of horticultural ideas.

Eastern Park, corner of Eastern Park Circuit and Podbury Drive, East Geelong

Ballarat Botanical Gardens

Ballarat turned Gold Rush wealth into a garden. Established in 1858 on a former police horse paddock, Ballarat Botanical Gardens grew into an extraordinary civic showpiece beside Lake Wendouree. Walk beneath the horse chestnuts of Australia’s only Prime Ministers Avenue, past Carrara marble figures shipped from Italy in the 1880s, then into the Robert Clark Conservatory for its rotating floral displays and celebrated tuberous begonias. More than 165 years later, Ballarat’s ambition is still written all over it.

401-405 Wendouree Parade, Lake Wendouree

Castlemaine Botanical Gardens

Gold diggers worked this ground before gardeners did. Gazetted in 1860, Castlemaine Botanical Gardens transformed worked-over creek flats into an ambitious botanical collection, shaped by longtime curator Philip Doran with plants supplied by Ferdinand von Mueller. Today, immense oaks, elms and conifers shade Lake Joanna, created after Barkers Creek was rerouted in the 1870s. Pass through locally forged cast-iron gates, find the old summerhouse and seek out an English oak planted in 1863, one of Victoria’s oldest commemorative trees.

Botanical Gardens, 2 Walker Street, Castlemaine

Cactus Country

Cactus Country began with one man refusing to let his father’s cactus collection disappear. Jim and Julie Hall turned that collection, and eventually a former Strathmerton peach orchard, into Australia’s largest cactus garden. Today, eight sandy trails cross almost 13 acres and more than 1,000 plant varieties, moving through Mexican, South American, North American and South African landscapes.

Sitchu Tip: Don’t miss Jim’s Valley of the Giants, then reward the trek with cactus ice cream or a frozen margarita.

4986 Murray Valley Highway, Strathmerton

Heronswood

Overlooking the sweep of Port Phillip Bay, Heronswood is both historic estate and garden institution, in that it helped change what Australians now grow. Since Penny and Clive Blazey brought The Diggers Club here in 1983, the Dromana garden has become synonymous with heirloom seeds, productive planting and varieties worth saving. Wander beneath 150-year-old trees, through perennial borders, vegetable gardens and the newly established seed-trial plot, all with Port Phillip Bay below.

Afterwards, browse the nursery or stop for lunch inside the historic Heronswood house. A beautiful garden, certainly, but also one with ideas behind it.

105 Latrobe Parade, Dromana

Blue Lotus Water Garden

Fun fact: Blue Lotus Water Garden owes its existence to some very hungry cormorants. When birds kept eating fish from the Cochrane family’s Yarra Junction lakes, lotus and waterlilies were planted as shelter; they flourished, and an entirely different idea took root. Today, more than 40 waterways spread across 14 acres, filled with extraordinary lotus displays and Giant Amazon waterlilies. Summer is the headline act, before begonias, salvias and hundreds of hanging baskets take over for autumn.

2628 Warburton Highway, Yarra Junction

Victoria State Rose Garden

When Victoria declared itself ‘The Garden State’ in 1976, the seed was planted for Victoria State Rose Garden. Over 5,000 roses now fill five hectares at Werribee Park, laid out as a giant Tudor rose with pathways forming its stem, leaf and bud. Follow them through Australian-bred roses, David Austin varieties and heritage collections, best seen from October to May. In 2003, it became the first rose garden outside Europe awarded International Garden of Excellence status.

K Road, Werribee South

Lavandula Swiss Italian Farm

Lavandula Swiss Italian Farm began long before the lavender. Swiss-Italian migrants Aquilino and Maria Tinetti established this 100-acre Shepherds Flat farm in 1870, and their stone farmhouse, barns and dairy remain part of its fabric today. Now, rows of lavender roll towards those 19th-century buildings, alongside olive groves, European-style gardens and resident farm animals. Explore the grounds, then settle in for lavender scones, lunch or a glass of wine at Maria’s Trattoria, the Post Office Deli or Tinetti’s.

Sitchu Tip: Visit from January to early autumn for the purple fields at their fullest.

350 Hepburn-Newstead Road, Shepherds Flat

Alowyn Gardens and Nursery

In 1997, Alowyn Gardens was a neglected Yarra Valley trotting farm with barely a tree to its name. Landscaper John van de Linde and horticulturalist Prue have spent almost three decades transforming it into seven acres of garden, from silver birch forest and formal parterre to a Versailles-inspired French garden. The headline act is the 100-metre Japanese wisteria arbour, planted in 1999 and dripping with metre-long blooms each spring. Save time for the nursery and Wisteria Cafe on your way out.

1210 Melba Highway, Yarra Glen 

Forest Glade Gardens

Forest Glade Gardens is a garden with a remarkable second life. Created from former orchard and grazing land from the 1940s, the 14-acre Mount Macedon property was devastated by the Ash Wednesday bushfires in 1983, then painstakingly rebuilt. Today, towering exotic trees lead into a Japanese garden and bonsai house, woodland plantings and a cool fern gully, with ponds and sculptures appearing between them. Autumn puts on the famous show, but Forest Glade rewards a visit in every season.

816 Mount Macedon Road, Mount Macedon

Can’t get enough of Melbourne and Victoria’s most beautiful gardens? Keep the fresh-air momentum going with our guide to the best outdoor activities in Melbourne, explore the walking trails, villages and lush scenery of the Dandenong Ranges, or plan your next scenic escape with our Adelaide to Melbourne road trip itinerary, which works just as beautifully in reverse.