Flower Fest bloomin’ great!

THE seventieth Ballarat Begonia Festival got underway over the long weekend with the Botanical Gardens a focus for the event.

The anniversary celebrations saw a range of new additions across the gardens and CBD, and visitors Geoff Smithers and Angele Cadge came from Melbourne to join in the entertainment.

“It’s very well-organised, they’ve done a great job signposting everything and it’s spread out super well so no one’s on top of each other. I can’t fault it, it’s fantastic,” Mr Smithers said.

He was especially impressed with the 700-begonia display housed within the Robert Clark Conservatory, while Ms Cadge, attending the festival for the second time, was in awe of the variety of attractions.

“It’s great to admire everything about it, especially the number of things we can see and the amount of effort that was put into it,” she said.

“This is one of the best gardens outside of Melbourne that I’ve ever seen. Ballarat is such a beautiful city, and this is the top of the iceberg here.”

Sebastopol resident Rebecca Reid got in early with her family to have her pick of plants, and said there was a celebratory feeling to the event throughout.

“It’s really nice that it’s back on. This is one of those family events that we look forward to, and it’s great that we can finally come back to it in person,” she said.

“Last year, it was much harder to plan around it so I like how they’ve spread it out and they’ve got more things going on around town as well.

“They’ve got so much stuff for the families and kids. It’s good fun. You can come and just spend the whole day here.”

With a reported attendance on par with pre-pandemic years, City of Ballarat mayor, Cr Daniel Moloney, said the festival served as a celebratory return to form.

“This Labour Day weekend had a really beautiful pre-COVID feel to it,” he said.

“It just had that feeling that people had been progressively wanting to get out over the past weekends, and this just provided that perfect weekend with a good range of things to do.”

The Begonia Festival will conclude on Sunday, 20 March.