Hidden deep within Montecito one would discover the stunning gardens and estate of Lotusland. Upon arriving at this remarkable site, you suddenly feel a sense of peace and heaven-like tranquility.

From the early 1800’s to mid-1900, the property was owned by many different wealthy and prominent families. Lotusland’s most renowned owner was Madame Ganna Walska. She was born Hanna Puacz in 1887 in Brest-Litovsk, Poland. Influenced by her musical studies, she took the stage name of Madame Ganna Walska. For the next couple decades, she sang in big cities such as New York City and Paris and toured America and Europe. She attracted the attention of and fascinated audiences, critics, and many male admirers. Throughout her life, she married six times and still found time to write a memoir titled, Always Room at the Top.

Once content with her musical career, Madame Walska became interested in California’s gorgeous weather and open-minded people. Her sixth and final husband, Theos Bernard, encouraged her to purchase the beautiful 37-acre estate in Santa Barbara in 1941. Because her first intention was to make it into a retreat for Tibetan monks, she appropriately named the estate “Tibetland”. Due to the fact that monks never arrived and her unfortunate divorce to Bernard, she decided to rename the estate to “Lotusland”. This name gave tribute to the sacred Indian lotus, which she truly loved and adored, that grows in one of the ponds on the property. She then chose to focus the majority of her time and energy to the grounds, rather than the estate.

This began her transformation from a distinguished socialite to an endowed garden designer. With much help from her natural artistic talent, she set out to create a garden rich with unique and exotic plants. To complete such an enormous ambition, she worked along-side a number of gifted and well-known landscape architects and designers, including Lockwood de Forest, Jr., Ralph T. Stevens, William Paylen, Oswald da Ros, and Charles Glass. One of her favorite designs was to simply crowd together single species of plants. Madame Walska was willing to pay any price to acquire the finest, largest, and most unusual plants she could find. She even auctioned off some of her precious jewelry in order to complete the project that she had begun in the 1970s, the cycad garden, which would be the last of her creations. Included in Lotusland are eleven very different, yet all beautiful, gardens. Some of the garden themes vary from Cactus, Water, Japanese, and Australian.

Madame Walska continued to be the very active and high-spirited “head gardener” of Lotusland up until the last few years of her life. She passed away March 2, 1984 at Lotusland. She left her garden and wealth to the Ganna Walska Lotusland Foundation, so that others could enjoy the love and dedication that she gave to Lotusland.