The Leura Gardens Festival in an annual event taking place in October featuring a selection of private gardens and the National Trust Property Everglades.

October is a perfect time to enjoy the springtime displays of the cool climate exotics and the Leura Gardens Committee never fail to come up with an excellent selection of gardens to present the best of the season.

The gardens vary in size, many take advantage of the topography to create a rich woodland feel, others distinctly suburban acre blocks that have been transformed into living showcases of the art of cool climate gardening.

There are gardens with rolling lawns, neat stone walls and colourful borders jammed with spring bulbs and others with magical winding paths and hidden shady nooks beside bubbling streams.

All the gardens have been beautifully prepared for the festival and are a mass of colour, especially Rhododendron including a wide array of species and hybrids like Mollis and Kurume along with the larger bloomed Rhododendron species.

Springtime camellias, dogwoods, magnolia, viburnum, wisteria and clematis are to be seen in lush displays in most gardens and some artfully combine these northern exotics with local natives like waratahs, often to good effect.

When this reviewer visited there was one garden with the largest Telopea (waratah) he had ever seen at 5m by 5m and in full bloom as well.

With ten gardens (including the ever popular and rambling Everglades) all included in your $20 ticket, this garden festival is excellent value and it will require around two full days to get the best out of it. But Leura is picture postcard pretty, has plenty of accommodation, some enchanting coffee shops and gift emporia and one of best eateries in the state – Silks – at the top of the high street.

For those wanting to make the best of their trip then also plant to see the Campbell Rhododendron Gardens at Blackheath, about a fifteen minute drive away.