Garden Grooves brings back Spring Sessions and puts its DJs up a tree

Ngunnawal Land/Canberra collective Garden Grooves returns with the 2026 instalment of its Spring Sessions series, an independent boutique festival staged in a backyard forest, just a few streets from Parliament House.

Taking place this year on Saturday, October 17, Spring Sessions offers the local scene an incredibly intimate daytime getaway, capped at only 200 people, with a lineup of up-and-comers from a range of genres.

The site itself is home to one of Garden Grooves' members, also known as the Pussy Palace, and while Spring Sessions offers a house-party-like atmosphere in many ways, organisers have made it clear it’s anything but. Security, food stalls, art installations and stage design are all built into the location.

"We're excited to create a backyard festival as you've never experienced before," the collective shared, describing the event as "a psychedelic spring wonderland" platforming "the experimental electronic music of the Canberra underground."

While many festivals build themselves around key features of their landscape, whether cliff faces, hills, or bodies of water, Spring Sessions has a far simpler tether: a tree.

The event is built quite literally into the tree, with an elaborate series of platforms that let guests climb between multiple levels. The DJ is also set to be in the tree, a change intended to open the event into a series of areas rather than one dedicated focal point.

Unsurprisingly, sustainability sits at the core of an event that relies entirely on nature, with every installation, decoration, and piece of furniture on-site sustainably sourced.

-

Tickets to Spring Sessions are available now.