It wasn't long ago Toowoomba gardener Val Peachey was bucketing grey water from the washing machine to keep her flowers alive during the drought.
This year, the watering can has turned into an ornament, hanging on the back fence.
"We've had a winter like the winters of old: cold and misty," Ms Peachey explained.
Toowoomba celebrates its annual Carnival of Flowers in the middle of September, but gardeners have been busy during winter months preparing the soil, planting seedlings, and fertilising, to make sure plants are at their colourful peak come spring.
"The cold weather has meant some plant development has been set back a little," Ms Peachey said.
"The foxgloves aren't flowering yet, and they're usually flowering by now.
"Some of my self-seeding plants didn't come up this year, and I put that down to too much wet and cold."
But she's looking on the bright side. Literally.
"With the cooler weather we've had, the flowers are looking more vibrant this year," she said.
"The heat does sort of 'bleach' the flowers and burn them off."
Third-time grand champion winner Bob Ford said he counted "six or seven" frosts in a row this year, which was "a lot when you're trying to get young seedlings to grow," he said.
After buying more than 1,500 seedlings for this year's garden display, he said he was happy to save money on water and pesticides, as the colder weather had kept bugs to a minimum.
"Hotter days bring humidity, and that creates a bit of fungus in the seedlings, but this year has been disease-free because it's been so cold."
"People might whinge a bit about being cold, but we just rug up," the champion gardener said.
Across town at Jill and Rod Osborne's Highfields home, the extra water has provided an extra challenge in the form of an unplanned water "feature" near his tank.
"I've only been able to mow once since January, and I nearly bogged the mower that day, because it's been so wet," he explained.
Mr Osborne said underground water tables were so full, water had seeped from an adjoining paddock.
"Our block is built on clay, and it's the first time we've ever seen anything like this," he explained.
The Osbornes' exhibition garden was designed to conserve water during dry times. This year, they've lost a number of established trees due to excess water.
Mrs Osborne said she planted her annuals in mud this year, another first.
"I mounded the beds up to give some extra drainage, and even added potting mix to the soil, and that worked for a while," she said.
Gardeners and farmers face another La Niña
The Bureau of Meteorology officially declared a third La Niña summer in a row, which ups the risk of rain and flooding in the coming months.
"The Darling Downs is probably a bit similar to the coast and [Queensland's] Burnett, where that water table has just really come up through all the rain we've had at the end of last growing season," explained Chelsea Jarvis, research fellow at the University of Southern Queensland's Centre for Applied Climate Sciences.
"We're going into spring with quite wet soils, which is good for some. But if we start getting quite a lot of spring rain that could very quickly become a boggy, muddy problem," Dr Jarvis said.
But there are still unknowns.
"No two La Niñas are the same, each impacts us differently," Dr Jarvis said.
"We live in a highly variable climate. And that means that we are going to have droughts again, and we are going to have floods again."
Back in the garden, Val Peachey is staying busy, even if she doesn't have to touch the watering can.
"There have been a lot more weeds this year," she laughed.
"But we never complain about the rain, it's better to have rain than drought. We just need to work with the seasons."
