Garden Ramble Committee president Lyndall Harrison said it was “a bit worrying” seeing the storm coming over on Friday night. 

“We had a launch and down it came a we were saying ‘goodness, I hope it doesn’t wash it out’, but fortunately we didn’t quite get the battering that Orange did,” she said. 

Visitors flocked from all over the state to attend, with buses from Sydney, a classic car club from Forbes and groups from far and wide visiting Millthorpe to have a gander at the gardens. 

“We had visitors from all across the state commenting on the high quality of the gardens, no-one had any favourites,” Mrs Harrison said. 

“It was a wonderful atmosphere.”

She said there wasn’t a single garden that stood out to here, and even looking through them all with the other garden owners during the week she couldn’t pick a ‘best’ garden. 

“I genuinely don’t have a favourite, we had a ramble on Monday for all the other gardeners all saying how every one of the gardens had a ‘wow’ factor, from the tiny ones all the way up to the big ones,” Mrs Harrison said. 

That ramble also set the creative juices flowing for the 2019 event, with plenty of people receiving “little bits stimulating the imagination” from other gardens. 

There wasn’t yet an official count from the ramble, but Mrs Harrison said numbers were similar to last year, which had a total attendance of 1500. 

She said the community was still getting behind the event just as strongly, with 120 volunteers taking part over the weekend. 

“It’s a huge community event,” she said. “It went really, really well.” 

“We had seven new gardens, so it’s pretty amazing heading into its 15th year and still getting new people coming on-board,” she said. 

Mrs Harrison also spruiked the "huge effort” garden owners put in to have their yards ready for the ramble. 

“It was a really tricky year for growing and to get them all looking superb was a huge effort, it added to the high quality of the gardens,” she said.