The best places to enjoy a stunning autumn around Melbourne

Take a deciduous plant, give it a sunny summer, add a chilly autumn and the result is often the same: high drama. You don’t have to be a gardener to appreciate the show-stopping brilliance of a leaf that is soon to be shed.

Walk down almost any street and already you will already see the hot blushes of autumn. Stay tuned because it will only get wilder from here. For especially super-charged theatrics, here is a selection of gardens where leaf colour will be at its most vivid over the next couple of months.

Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne

Thanks to the sheer breadth of plant species in this sprawling horticultural haven, Melbourne’s botanic gardens have pretty well every shade of autumn covered. All the fiery stalwarts – maples, ashes, ginkgos, oaks – are here flashing reds, yellows, pinks and purples. With more than 8500 species of plants across 38 hectares, everywhere you walk you will find head-turning species, such as Tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) coming over yellow-scarlet, Variegated Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera ‘Aureomarginatum’) growing golder by the day, Sweet Buckeye (Aesculus flava) taking on an orange turn and Persion Ironwood (Parrotia persica) mixing it up with sunset tones of yellow, orange and red. And that’s just the start – the more you look, the more you will see.

Carlton Gardens, Carlton

One of a suite of public landscapes fashioned in Melbourne in the 19th century that is now brightening our 21st-century autumns. Strewn with elms, plane trees, oaks and poplars this garden pairs dramatic leaf colour with decorative fountains, intricate parterres and the all-out grandeur of the Royal Exhibition Building. Not only are these blushing trees lining paths and forming clusters on lawns but they are unfurling right along the gardens’ perimeter so that even just driving past you can sample the seasonal delights. But for the full immersive experience you will need to pull up and linger a while in this 26-hectare World Heritage Site on the edge of Melbourne’s CBD.

Alfred Nicholas Memorial Garden, Sherbrooke

Thanks to their elevation, the Dandenong Ranges are famously strong on autumn colour and this delightful garden won’t disappoint. It was established almost a century ago by the pharmaceutical magnate Alfred Nicholas and, while Nicholas died barely four years after moving to the property, the autumnal flourishes he envisaged continue to bathe the place in colour.

Although there are maples, beeches and elms, it is the ginkgos that are the real draw card here. They surround the garden’s picture-perfect lake – complete with bridges, islands and a boathouse – and if you time your visit for when their distinctive leaves are dropping on the water you will see a landscape turning gold from every angle.