The much-loved Tweed Ride gets festivities under way tomorrow morning, travelling from Lake Wendouree to the Town Hall and the Mining Exchange with riders dressed in vintage and heritage inspired outfits featuring tweed, capes and kilts also encouraged to enter the Tweed Fashions on the Field event afterwards.

The Ballarat Botanical Gardens will also be a hive of activity across the weekend. Learn more about the 'giants of the tree world' with a free guided tour through the garden's collection of 160-year-old sequoiadendron giganteum, or giant redwoods.

Additional tours will also focus on the significance of the gardens as a heritage site, while a Botanikids program will teach the smallest of botanists about the giant sequoias.

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Friends of the Ballarat Botanical Gardens guide Wendy Sandiford said the trees provided a direct link to the city's early history.

"We're very fortunate to have the sequoiadendron giganteum which were planted in 1863. They were considered a very special tree then, they had only been discovered by Europeans ten years earlier and they are part of our heritage," she said.

"They're National Trust trees and they're trees that are some of the biggest in the world in terms of volume and not many places have them in as long an avenue as we do, so it's pretty special that we have them and we should be celebrating them.

"It's just a chance for people to come into the gardens, to look at the trees in a different way and to learn more about them, if you'd like to come along to the talk and learn more about them botanically and the history as well which is really quite fascinating."

Other Heritage Festival events across the weekend include tours of the Ballarat Old Gaol, heritage tram rides and a beer school.

More information is available at the Ballarat Heritage Festival website.

Along with the Heritage Festival, Ballarat's comedy scene continues its comeback tonight after a long break last year.

Lehmo headlines BallaRatCat Comedy's monthly show at The George tonight.

BallaRatCat Comedy producer Beth Lamont said the comedy night was getting back to full speed with plans to run shows at least once a month with additional events in between.

"The first Friday of every month is always our headline stand-up comedy night with four or five performers for that show and then we're hoping to run more shows that people might have seen at festivals and things like that," she said.

"We've got Troy Kinne coming up, so more of those shows and more programming coming up soon.

"The audience reaction has been encouraging. People are really excited to go out and see things and be with other people, it's great."

Ms Lamont said watching comedy online last year was not quite the same.

"It's kind of back to normal. I think the venue has a QR code to check in and, of course, we can refund people if they're not feeling well to come to the show but apart from that, it's really back to normal which is great," she said.

"I know there are some open mic nights getting up and running again so there's an appetite for watching comedy again and an appetite for performing it too, so definitely getting back in the swing of things."

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