Lotusland
Ganna Walska Lotusland, also known as Lotusland, is a non-profit botanical garden located in Montecito, California, United States. The garden is the historic estate of Madame Ganna Walska. Lotusland is home to 3,500 different plants. The County of Santa Barbara restricts visitation via a conditional use permit: Lotusland botanic garden is open to the public by reservation only.
History
In the 1870s the property was first used as a nursery.Ralph Kinton Stevens purchased the land in 1882; he and his wife, Caroline Lucy Tallant, named the property "Tanglewood". This name was inspired by the abundance of oak and chaparral on the property. They established a lemon and palm nursery and eventually added other tropical plants to the collection. Stevens was among the early plantsmen of Santa Barbara. In 1893, Stevens was the first in California publish a nursery catalog solely for tropical and subtropical plant material. Stevens established an irrigation system for the property to sustain the gardens. Stevens sold part of the property. Going from the original down to the currently. In September 1896 Stevens died of a heart attack, leaving the property to his wife, Caroline. She opened the gardens up as a guest ranch and later leased the property to a local school.
In 1913 the property was sold to George Owen Knapp. who was buying up other properties in the Montecito area.
In 1916 the estate was sold to the Gavit family, from Albany, New York, who renamed it "Cuesta Linda". The Gavit family added landscape elements, garden structures, and the main residence designed in 1919 by Reginald Johnson in the Mediterranean Revival style. The Gavits hired Peter Riedel and Kinton Stevens' son, Ralph to renovate the gardens while the residence was being built. In 1921–1927 they commissioned additional buildings and alterations to the residence in the Spanish Colonial Revival style from George Washington Smith. Smith's work includes the water garden pool house, stable, and the distinctive pink walls of the estate.
The gardens were created over four decades by opera singer Madame Ganna Walska, who owned the property as a private residence from 1941 until her death in 1984. Originally she purchased the property with her then husband, Theos Bernard, and renamed the property "Tibetland". They selected this name as they intended to invite Tibetan monks to live on the property.
Shortly after purchasing the property she hired the landscape architect Lockwood DeForest Jr. He spent time editing the garden spaces to as per Madame Walska requests. DeForest designed the front lawn of the residence building. Changing it from a traditional landscape to one filled with golden barrel cacti. Many of these mature cacti were taking from the nearby estate of John Wright. Madame Walska also requested that he transform the stables to a music studio. In 1942 DeForest's work on the property ended when he joined the US army.
In 1943 Madame Walska hired Ralph Stevens, Superintendent of Parks for Santa Barbara, to consult on landscape designs for her estate. In 1946 Madame Walska and Bernard divorced. She kept the property and renamed it "Lotusland". During this time Stevens main job was to purchase plant material and supervising the installation process. In 1947 Paddock Pool constructed a new swimming pool designed by Stevens. This was requested by Madame Walska because she wanted a modernize pool, but was told by consulted pool experts that the existing pool could not be converted. The following year Stevens got to work designing a grotto and the Theatre Garden. In he's last few years working for Madame Walska, Stevens final projects where creating The Blue Garden and the floral clock found in The Topiary Garden. In 1955, Stevens retired.
Between 1953 and 1956 Madame Walska managed the conversion of the old swinging pool to its current day statue of a water garden. During this process she consulted J.T. Charleson, who worked at Tricker Water Garden. Oswald da Ros was a stonemason hired by Madame Walska. Ros collected many of the rocks and crystals found around the property. Most notably he brought the blue slag glass from the Arrowhead Water Company to the garden, which now lines a number of the path ways around the gardens.
The garden was opened to the public in 1993.