The Ballarat Botanical Gardens, on the western shore of Lake Wendouree, were laid out in 1857 and are one of the best-preserved Victorian-era public gardens in Australia. The plantings — formal beds, mature avenues of plane trees and oaks, dozens of large specimen conifers — were designed for the gold-rich townspeople of the 1860s and have been carefully kept ever since.
The Robert Clark Conservatory stages the annual Begonia Festival every March, displaying around 500 tuberous begonias propagated from a collection developed by the gardens' staff since the 1930s. Prime Ministers Avenue — bronze busts of every Australian PM — runs along one of the main paths. Free, open daily.