A greeter at Lotusland

I am never dis­ap­pointed by Lotus­land. Set in the Mon­tecito area south of Santa Bar­bara, these sin­gu­lar gar­dens were imag­ined and willed to life by the viva­cious Pol­ish opera singer Ganna Wal­ska. Madame Wal­ska pur­chased the estate in 1941 and spent the next 43 years of her life design­ing unusual dis­play gar­dens with exotic plants. Among her col­lec­tions are rare cacti, palms, euphor­bias and some of the old­est and most valu­able cycads in existence.

Is it real?

Madame Wal­ska was larger than life and lived life to the fullest. Part of her pink Mediter­ranean man­sion has been recently opened as a very spe­cial small museum with her gowns, jew­els and pho­tos on dis­play. There is so much to see at Lotus­land that I could never cover it on this one pal­try page. Their web­site is www​.lotus​land​.org and tour reser­va­tions are taken at this num­ber: 805−969−9990.

An idea to copy…

In review­ing the gar­dens of Lotus­land for this post, I real­ized how high main­te­nance my small gar­den is, and how I need to find a way to sim­plify it. Thank you, Madam Wal­ska — with­out a staff like yours, sim­ple is best!

On the web:

The fol­low­ing botan­i­cal gar­dens offer lots of classes and events; they are get­ting very active now that Spring is here. You can find their links under “Find a nursery/​Botanical Gar­dens” in the left col­umn of this page.

• Los Ange­les Arboretum
• The Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Wild­flow­ers and Native Plants
• Des­canso Gardens
• Hunt­ing­ton Botan­i­cal Gardens
• San Diego Botan­i­cal Gardens