This Bendigo garden is a wonderful example of what can be achieved on an average-sized suburban block with a modest budget and loads of imagination. Owner and garden designer Lee Adams has created a charming series of interconnecting garden rooms with special outdoor living spaces, providing a haven for birds, wildlife, and humans.

Located opposite the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens and drawing on the stunning borrowed landscape of Forest Hall next door, Clontarf is the seventh historic garden across half a century that owners Beverly and Anthony Knight have saved from neglect in the district.

Located just north of Castlemaine, the 3-acre garden at Hedgehogs surrounds a 1923 farmhouse tended by owners Margot and Morry Rotten for 32 years.

Melrose is a garden not easily categorised, with a strong Mediterranean theme, dry climate plantings, elements of cottage gardens, an extensive use of productive plants in an ornamental context, and a mix of formality and informality.

Visit the home garden of landscape designer Sam Cox. Mentored by pioneering Australian landscape designer Gordon Ford, Sam’s garden is created in the Australian natural style.

A historic property designed in 1926 by Melbourne architect Marcus Martin; the garden showcases a perfect combination of European and Mediterranean plants.

Tugurium is the fascinating private garden of renowned garden expert, radio personality, and nurseryman Stephen Ryan. Set on a peaceful country lane at Macedon, the garden showcases Stephen’s decades-long dedication to collecting and curating rare and unusual plants, including species on the Plant Trust National Plant Collections Register, such as Acanthus, Sambucus, and Osmanthus.

Created in 1994 by landscape designer Grant Saltmarsh, the 1.5-acre garden includes a sunken garden, a caged vegetable garden, and meandering paths flanked by perennial beds and mature fruit trees, often ducking off into secret hidden corners.