...softly sing in the dark'ning air
Though other lands of earth are fair
Forever and forever more
We will dream on the lotus shore
~ Mrs Gregory Smith, Atla: A story of the lost island, 1886.......
Lotusland.
A simple, elegant Mediterranean villa wears a sunny tuscan hue and reclines near the base of the chaparral-covered mountains in Montecito, California. The building is all the more vivid for the turquoise dome of sky that shines above it most days. Weeping euphorbia ingens, tall plants that grow in long, twisting loops, stand dramatically along the front of the house and form a phantasmagorical and rag-tag assemblage.
This is an environment extraordinaire.
Exquisite. Edgy. Wild.
Vibrant life - 37 acres of it. The Lotusland property is wrapped in a wide wall of aged pink stucco. The very air is tinged with a portent of discovery and drama, where mysteries are sure to be revealed, and more enticingly, secrets must surely be kept.
Within the wall, surrounding the house - are the legendary Lotusland gardens.
The story of Lotusland began in 1882, when Ralph Kinton Stevens, a transplanted Englishman, settled here.
The natural landscape in Montecito is arid and dry. The plains, foothills, and mountains are covered with chaparral. Coastal live oaks, California sycamores, manzanita, ceanothus, sage, toyon, and grasses that are indiginous to the southern coast of California proliferate.
Thankfully, Stevens was not limited by what he saw in the natural landscape, he was inspired by what it could become.
He was a natural plantsman, an avid horticulturist who began filling the land with plants from around the world: palms, avocados, lemons, oranges, olives, bananas, mangos, and more. He also preserved many of the old-growth oaks and sycamores, some of which continue to thrive on the property today.
Stevens called his estate "Tanglewood". He built his family home here, raised his children, and reveled in the life he had created.
He worked closely with other local plantsmen, and became something of a horticultural goodwill ambassador. He encouraged Southern Californians to create gardens using exotic varieties of plants that had never been seen in America before. Stevens furthered his mission when he opened a nursery at Tanglewood, providing local access to plant material that had been, only a few years before, unobtainable here.
The frontispiece shows some of the finest specimens to be seen in the country. The slender growing, feathery-headed palm in the center is Cocos plumosa from Brazil; on the right corner stands the Sabal Palmetto from our Southern Atlantic coast; on the left, Palma Azul or Blue Palm, Krythea armata from lower California, while in the background are to be seen two huge specimens of the Palma de miel or Coquito Juba a spectabilis from Chile, and of Phoenix Canadensis from the Canary Islands , which has become so popular all over California. Under the Cocos is a young clump of giant bamboo, Bambusa vulgaris from India.
This picture was taken in El Montecito near Santa Barbara at the residence of the late Kinton Stevens who was one of the most enthusiastic pioneers to enrich California with plants from other lands ~Santa Barbara, Cal.
~ Dr F Franchesci, Out West Magazine, 1896
When Stevens' died, the estate languished. For years, it was rented out, then leased, until it was purchased by George Owen Knapp in 1913.
Knapp and his wife were generous philanthropists who loved theater, art, and traveling the world. When they weren't traveling the globe, they tended their home and beloved garden in Montecito.
In 1916, Palmer Gavit and his wife purchase the property, and name it "Cuesta Linda" - Beautiful Hill. They commissioned Reginald Johnson, renowned architect, to design the Mediterranean-style home. Construction was completed in 1920.
The original gardens had matured beautifully, and had been embellished in the decades since Ralph Kinton Stevens had first stepped foot on the soil. Soon, they hired George Washington Smith, another luminary architect, who designed the pink wall, the pool and pavilion, garages, and other scattered buildings. The property was imbued with a new, fresh vision.
In 1941, Madame Ganna Walska first appeared at the property on Sycamore Canyon Road.
Ganna Walska, a Polish woman, was a devastating young beauty. She skillfully crafted charm and seduction into a commodity that many of the world's richest and most influential men longed to possess. She traveled extensively. She took up opera. She was like a little tiny stick of dynamite - an explosive package. Although society was scandalized by her outré behavior, the world was secretly delighted by her escapades and unconventional lifestyle.
She had numerous and well-publicized affairs - and a total of six marriages. She had voracious appetite for luxury and finery, a bold, audacious manner - and she always cut a glamorous figure.
She owned Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and the dozens of bespoke costumes that Erte created for her to wear during her operatic performances.
She started her own perfume company. She purchased an incredible Faberge egg (that was later sold to Malcom Forbes for $50,000). Madame Ganna Walska owned a world-famous 95-carat yellow briolet diamond (The Walska Diamond) - among her other treasures.
Her tastes - and acquisitions - were legendary.
Ganna Walska and husband #6, Theos Bernard, were thrilled when they found Cuesta Linda. They purchased it and named the estate "Tibetland". Bernard, known for a time as “The White Lama”, was a yoga master and guru. Together, Walska and Bernard planned to create a spiritual retreat at Tibetland.
However - the guru was revealed to be a charlatan, and the marriage fell apart.
Now, it was just Ganna Walska and the Garden.
She named her estate, Lotusland, in 1945.
Madame's passions, formerly reserved for men, travel, luxury - were soon subsumed by her love of the garden. She cared less for fashion and frivolity these days - although she still dabbled.
She dug her hands into the black earth. She walked barefoot on the grass. She swam naked in the pool in the bright sun of the morning, and the soft coolness of moonlight.
She imagined, designed - then installed - outrageous displays of plant material in the garden. She traded jewels for rare plants. She picked apples, apricots, lemons and clementines from the orchard. She woke early, and worked alongside her gardeners until late in the afternoons. She gathered baskets of rose blooms and drank in their fragrance.
She amassed a library filled with books about the rare and historic gardens of the world, and books about architecture, landscaping, plant culture, and garden pests. She potted and pruned her geraniums. She built an outdoor theater, where she hosted musical performances and theatrical masques. She pulled weeds, spread manure, clipped hedges, pruned tree limbs. She became a gardener's gardener.
She engaged Lockwood de Forest, artist and landscape architect, to help implement her newest ideas. He designed the succulent garden, the cactus display in front of the house, and other gardens on the property.
She engaged Ralph Tallant Stevens to join in planning her garden. Stevens, Ralph Kinton Stevens' son, had grown up on the land, and understood all the transformations and incarnations of the property. He was a founding member of the Santa Barbara Horticultural Society, and an important figure in the horticultural development of Santa Barbara County. He designed the iron gate that faces Sycamore Canyon Road, the Blue Garden, and he helped to obtain and install the giant garden clock that is the centerpiece of the Topiary Garden.
Eventually, Joseph Knowles, a well-known artist and local teacher, worked with Madame in designing the Aloe Garden and the pool that is edged with a ring of abalone shells.
In the 1960s, Madame installed the Japanese Garden with the help of Frank Fuji, who recently retired from his 50-year tenure in the Garden. He worked at Lotusland until he was 90 years old.
The garden continued to develop through the decades. Madame Ganna Walska filled one of her three swimming pools with mud - and lotus plants. It was a bold move of genius. Every August, the shaded pool is transformed with statuesque lotus flowers that are held aloft on six-foot-tall stems. The nearby pools are covered with delicate waterlilies.
I think of her there, standing amid the rich, rosy colors that kaleidoscope in the dappled shade. Here, the quiet summer heat hums with life; dragonflies (metallic cinnbar and bottle-green), flicker above still water. Liquid reflections of sky appear - a sharp china-blue. What did Madame think, in moments alone, about her true life's partner - the gardens of Lotusland?
After Madame's passing in her 97th year, the dream continued. Her garden lived on as legacy. The Lotusland Foundation was formed. The Foundation restored the gardens and buildings that had been neglected in Madame's last years. Lotusland was opened as a public garden.
Docents, an extensively-trained and passionate lot, offer guided tours of the garden, twice daily, from February through November.
I worked for a season in the Garden Shop at Lotusland. I would arrive early in the morning to open the shop, and prepare for the Saturday tour that began at 10:00am. Visitors and docents gather outside the Garden Shop, before departing for the tour. Although Madame's original vision of Tibetland as a spiritual retreat were not exactly realized, I assure you, this is the playground of the mystic and divine.
Often, I was the first person in the garden. I began my morning walk through the fern and begonia gardens. Deeply shaded, the garden beds were flecked on either side with pink and peach-colored blossoms that nestled in the dark, textured leaves of prized begonias; the fragrant blooms from the huge angels' trumpet (datura) dripped with the remnants of last night's fog.
As I circled through the Japanese garden, I would notice the azeleas in bloom, or the camellias, or the reddening of the Japanese maple leaves, each in its season. One morning, I saw a pair of blue herons in the pond, feasting on glittering red koi, while nearby, life-sized statues of cranes stood sentinal.
Between tours, I would sweep, and clean, and then sit on the patio and read the newest gardening books: The Gardens of Columbia, Seaside Gardening, The English Cottage Garden, Santa Barbara Style, The Trees of Santa Barbara, and many others.
At lunch, I would walk the garden. In the late winter months, the paths were chilly, muddy and puddled in places, with leftover rain dripping, like falling gems, down the columned cypress trees; in the heat of summer, I would linger in the cool tropical garden, where large philodenrons and bananas mingle beside the soft bark trails, and dozens of epiphyites hang above the pathways.
In the springtime that year, we all watched as a pair of tiny towhees selected a potted plant on the patio as the perfect nesting site. There, within the rim of the black one-gallon pot, beneath the shelter of the plant, they nested and hatched their eggs. K was there when the babies had grown old enough to fluff and flutter, and hop up to the lip of the pot. She said they flapped and faltered amid great bird fanfare - and suddenly - they could fly. Just like that, they were gone.
There are daily treasures, small and large. There are gardens galore to discover: the Blue Garden, the Cycad Garden, the bromeliads. The cactus garden had recently been planted during my season at Lotusland. I thought the cacti out of place - too stark. And now, I see - it belongs. It is breathtaking and beautiful. The garden continues to evolve.
There is never a bad day to visit Lotusland. It is a living creature, a place of many faces and guises.
I was passing through the butterfly garden one afternoon, when a cloud of monarch butterflies drifted over the hedges and tumbled above the flowers as they flew along. I was mystified. From whence would a cloud of butterflies appear, and where could they be going?
Last week, while visiting the garden aviary, we saw the turtle doves nuzzle and coo - the early steps in their mating dance.
Lizards live here, and rabbits wild - and animals created from the plants themselves.
Lotusland is a shifting fata morgana of delight - illusion and actuality slip and shimmer and change places and take on new shapes entirely, from moment to moment.
Visit the Lotusland website. It serves as your personal invitation.
View the map, learn about upcoming events, make a reservation to take a real-life tour.
Lotusland was created - for all of us - by some of the world's most interesting and visionary gardeners. It is lovingly tended and maintained today, by an entirely new group of interesting and visionary gardeners, scholars, volunteers, and trustees who oversee the health and vibrant life of the garden.
It is a community resource, a teaching garden. It is a living legacy, a labor of love, a world-class historic and horticultural preserve.
You must come and see it for yourself.
