Gardens of the Dandenong Ranges Private Day Tour

The Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden is Victoria’s premier cool-climate garden. With breathtaking views over the Yarra Valley, the garden features important collections of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and more, in a setting of native and exotic trees. Seasonal changes ensure the garden is a year-round delight.

The Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden is home to a staggering 15,000 rhododendrons, 12,000 azaleas, 3,000 camellias and 250,000 daffodils clothed in colour in spring and autumn. The garden houses Australia’s largest collection of Australian and overseas raised hybrids of rhododendrons that cannot be replaced, re-bred or re-imported.

Not many have the chance to make a garden out of an old flower farm. Cloudehill’s design derives from Italian renaissance gardens, English arts and crafts gardens, and from contemporary meadow gardening. Deep volcanic soil and moist mild weather allow plants to achieve majestic proportions. The two magnificent weeping maples at the heart of the gardens are just stunning. These glorious trees are historic, they came from Japan in 1928. With so many ‘garden rooms’ you will find a few at their peak no-matter the time of year.

The Alfred Nicholas Gardens are a perfect scenic haven, with rock walls, a picturesque lake, a boathouse and areas for picnicking. The foliage and flowers are the stars of the show, revealing a kaleidoscope of colour in vibrant bloom year-round, from azaleas and orchids to ferns and maple leaves, beneath a canopy of towering mountain ash trees.

The George Tindale Memorial Garden contains a number of plants rarely found in cultivation, which are thriving in the acidic soils, cool temperate climate and shaded conditions found in the Dandenong Ranges. Extensive collections of magnolias, rhododendrons, camellias, azaleas and hydrangeas will delight garden enthusiasts.

The gardens offer something new with each season – a myriad of flowers in spring; hydrangeas and lilliums in summer; a canopy of gold, red, orange and burgundy in Autumn and the flowers of the Lenten Rose or Hellebore beneath flowering shrubs in winter.

Formerly the private 23-acre garden and home of Harvey and Gillian Ansell, purchased in 1959, the Pirianda Gardens were donated to the Victorian Government in 1977 and then managed by Parks Victoria since 1995.

Created on a steep hillside over a number of years, paths interlink and meander through exotic tree plantings and down into a beautiful fern gully, dominated by blackwoods and tree ferns. 500 metres or so of fabulous stone walls built between the 1960s and early 1980s, line some of the paths and steps.

During overseas holidays, the Ansell’s would seek new and unusual plants to import for their garden. 28 different types of Maple and 13 varieties of Birch create a beautiful autumnal display, Rhododendrons and many other flowering plants welcome in the spring, making the gardens an all year round pleasure to visit.