Spring in Sydney has a short window where everything is green and not yet too hot, and we always try to catch it somewhere new. This year that meant a Saturday morning at the Paper Daisy Spring Festival at the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan, out past Campbelltown. Free entry, a field of native daisies, and a weekend program that actually gives kids something to do beyond “look at the pretty flowers” — that combination was enough to get us in the car.
The festival itself runs from 4 September to 11 October, but a few things about timing and what’s actually on caught us out, so I’ll get those out of the way first.
The Flowers Don’t Bloom the Whole Time
This is the bit worth knowing before you plan around a specific weekend. The paper daisy display is planted in the Connections Garden, right next to Lakeside Lawn, and the garden’s own advice is that the flowers are at their best from late August through to mid-to-late September. The festival itself keeps going until 11 October with music, food and workshops, but the flowers themselves don’t necessarily last the whole run. We went on the first weekend and the daisies were already well out, patches of white and pink stretching across the beds. If you’re going purely for photos of the flower field, I’d aim for early or mid-September rather than leaving it for the school holidays in late September or October.
What Was Actually On the Weekend We Went
The festival has a daily program and a separate, busier one for weekends, and it’s the weekend one that made the trip worthwhile with kids in tow. On the Saturday we were there:
- Live music on Lakeside Lawn, 12pm to 3pm — good for sitting on a picnic mat with a coffee while the kids wander
- Free kids’ craft activities from 10am to 2pm (Saturdays only, not Sundays)
- Face painting for $5 a face, no booking needed, 12pm to 3pm
- A florist pop-up on Lakeside Lawn from 10am to 2pm, where you can make your own posy jar or buy a bunch, no booking required, you just pay for what you pick
- Giant Jenga and Connect Four set up on the lawn (this one only runs 4 to 21 September, so it won’t be there for the whole festival)
Our daughter went straight for the face painting queue, which moved faster than I expected, and then spent a good twenty minutes making her own little jar of flowers at the florist stand. That was the highlight of the morning for her, more than the daisies themselves if I’m honest.
If you want something a bit more structured, there’s also a paid workshop called Paint Among the Paper Daisies, run by Pinot & Picasso next to the flower beds. It’s $65 for adults and $45 per child, materials included, and you’ll need to book ahead since it’s not a walk-up activity like everything else.
We Missed the New Walking Track (It Wasn’t Open Yet)
One thing we didn’t get to do: the garden has a new cultural walk called the Muru Nangamai / Pathway to Dreaming Walk, which takes you up to the Mount Annan summit with poetry, language and art along the way. It only opened on 11 September, a week after our visit, so if you’re going in that first week of the festival like we did, don’t expect it to be ready. If your visit falls after that date, it sounds like the better lookout point in the garden and I’d try to fit it in.
Food, the Playground, and Where to Sit
The Gardens Café is open daily from 8:30am to 4pm if you want a proper sit-down breakfast or lunch, and there’s also a Gozleme food truck and a coffee cart running from 10am to 2pm most days near the festival area. We brought our own picnic in the end, mostly because we wanted to sit near the flowers rather than back near the café, and there’s plenty of grass to spread a mat on Lakeside Lawn.
The Garden’s Playground is right next to the café, which works out well — kids can burn off energy on the nature-play equipment while you finish a coffee. We ended up there for a solid thirty minutes after the festival activities wound down, which was a good way to close out the visit before the drive home.
A Few Things We’d Do Differently Next Time
Parking fills up by mid-morning on weekends, so if you’re coming from the city I’d leave earlier than feels necessary — we arrived around 9:30am and still had to walk a bit from the overflow area. Entry to the garden itself is free, so there’s no ticket to sort out in advance unless you’re booking the painting workshop. And because the shade in the Connections Garden is limited, hats and sunscreen are worth packing even on a mild-looking spring morning.
If you’re building a spring school holiday list for Sydney, this one’s worth slotting in alongside the sunflower fields around Sydney we’ve covered before, or paired with a playground stop like Wadanggari Park or Alexander Clark Park if you’re making a full day of it further south. And if you’re trying to work out which weekend fits your school calendar, our NSW School Holidays 2026 page has the term dates so you can see how the festival’s run lines up with the holidays.
We’ll likely go back before it wraps up on 11 October, mostly to see the new summit walk now that it’s open. If flowers are the main drawcard for you though, don’t wait that long — go while the paper daisies are still in full colour.