Gardens of the Dandenong Ranges Private Day Tour

Exploring the Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden

The Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden is Victoria’s leading cool-climate garden. With stunning vistas of the Yarra Valley, the garden has notable collections of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, and other plants in a setting of native and exotic trees. Seasonal changes make the garden a year-round joy.

The Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden boasts 15,000 rhododendrons, 12,000 azaleas, 3,000 camellias, and 250,000 daffodils that bloom in the spring and fall. The garden is home to Australia’s biggest collection of Australian and abroad grown hybrid rhododendrons that cannot be replaced, re-bred, or re-imported.

Cloudehill Gardens: A Fusion of Styles and History

Not many people have the opportunity to create a garden out of an old flower farm. Cloudehill’s design draws inspiration from Italian Renaissance gardens, English Arts and Crafts gardens, and modern meadow gardening. Plants may grow to grandiose proportions because to deep volcanic soil and wet, moderate weather. The two huge weeping maples at the centre of the grounds are really gorgeous. These magnificent trees are ancient, having arrived from Japan in 1928. With so many ‘garden rooms’, you’re bound to find a couple that are at their peak no matter what time of year.

Tranquil Retreat of Alfred Nicholas Gardens and Unique Flora at George Tindale Memorial Garden

The Alfred Nicholas Gardens are the perfect scenic retreat, complete with rock walls, a lovely lake, a boathouse, and picnic spaces. The foliage and flowers steal the show, offering a kaleidoscope of colour in spectacular bloom year-round, from azaleas and orchids to ferns and maple leaves, all beneath a canopy of towering mountain ash trees.

The George Tindale Memorial Garden has a number of species that are rarely grown in cultivation but thrive in the Dandenong Ranges’ acidic soils, chilly temperate temperature, and shadow. Garden aficionados will enjoy the extensive collections of magnolias, rhododendrons, camellias, azaleas, and hydrangeas.

The gardens change with the seasons, with a variety of blooms in spring, hydrangeas and lilliums in summer, a canopy of gold, scarlet, orange, and burgundy in autumn, and the blossoms of the Lenten Rose or Hellebore beneath flowering bushes in winter.

Pirianda Gardens: A Labor of Love and Botanical Wonder

The Pirianda Gardens were once Harvey and Gillian Ansell’s own 23-acre garden and residence, bought in 1959. They were donated to the Victorian Government in 1977 and have been administered by Parks Victoria since 1995.

Paths interlink and meander through exotic tree plantings before descending into a stunning fern valley dominated by blackwoods and tree ferns. Some of the walks and steps are lined with 500-metre-long beautiful stone walls erected between the 1960s and early 1980s.
During the overseas trips, the Ansells would look for new and exotic plants to import for their garden, increasing the experience of day visits from Melbourne to the Dandenong Ranges. Twenty-eight distinct Maple and thirteen species of Birch offer a lovely autumnal show, while Rhododendrons and many other blooming plants greet in the spring, making the gardens enjoyable to visit all year.