Melbourne's Tesselaar Tulip Festival is about to turn the Dandenongs into a sea of a million flowers

Victoria's most photogenic paddock is back, and this time it is staying open for a full month.

The Tesselaar Tulip Festival returns to Silvan in the Dandenong Ranges from Saturday 12 September through to Sunday 11 October, with more than a million tulips turning the fields into the kind of colour explosion that makes every phone camera within cooee work overtime. Gates open 10am to 5pm daily across the run.

This is not just a walk through some flowers and a coffee situation either. The festival is themed by weekend and week, so what you get depends on when you show up. Turkish Weekend kicks things off on 12 and 13 September, followed by a full week of Spring Fever, then Dutch Weekend on 19 and 20 September complete with the cultural nods you would expect from a festival built around a very Dutch flower. Kids get their own dedicated weeks too, and things wrap up with an Irish Weekend on the final weekend, 10 and 11 October.

If live music and a glass of something cold is more your speed, All That Jazz Weekend lands 25 to 27 September, and Rock the Fields takes over the first weekend of October. Basically, there is a version of this festival for whichever mood you are in, spread across four weeks instead of the usual one big weekend crush.

Silvan sits about an hour from Melbourne's CBD, making this an easy day trip if you time it right and avoid the obvious peak Saturday crowds. Book tickets in advance, wear shoes you do not mind getting a bit muddy and go early if you actually want a clear shot without fifteen strangers in frame.

Spring in Melbourne means unpredictable weather and even less predictable footpaths, but a paddock full of a million tulips is one of the few sure things on the calendar. Get in before the season wraps up on 11 October.