Ballarat Botanical Gardens

Laid out in 1858 on the shore of Lake Wendouree, Ballarat's gardens are a grand cool-climate landscape of sweeping lawns, mature conifers and one of the finest collections of garden statuary in the country. The Prime Ministers Avenue lines the walk with bronze busts of every Australian prime minister, while the fernery, the begonia-filled Robert Clark Conservatory and towering sequoias give the gardens their character. The annual Begonia Festival fills the glasshouse each autumn. Free to enter and edged by the lake's rowing course, the gardens are the green heart of the old goldfields city.