This Very Lotusland

For in wrapping her interests in plants and flowers she keeps her heart young. This is the way she finds all, or nearly all, the forms which nature lends to the great dream of love, to the yearning for beauty which stirs within every one of us.
--Patrick Mahoney, Noticias

It is a garden that has haunted me for many years now, one that is rooted in a lust for the rare and exotic. There hidden away in Montecito, it could easily be one of Roberto Burle Marx's stunning designs in tropical Brazil, yet the genesis and evolution of this place, this Lotusland, is decidedly female.

As a student of landscape architecture in southern California during the new wave of postmodern movement of the 1980s, I know that Lotusland engenders all that we sought to express. The funny thing is, it was a garden perhaps fifty years ahead of its time, the product of an operatic diva who designed instinctively, not with her head- but with her deeply emotional heart. Many of us work our lifetime trying to grasp the very surreal nature of this space, but never really achieve it due to the constraints of our training. Yet out of the mouths of babes came this wonderful garden that will forever evoke in its visitors strong reactions, some with wonder and admiration, and others too inhibited to appreciate all that it is. Yet such is the case with all avant guarde art that is first rejected by the narrow minded, but later becomes priceless.

Perhaps though, to push the envelope, to step outside the narrow path of design can only be achieved with one's own garden. There is no way to convince a client that a flowerless landscape peopled with exotic plants, colored gravel and slag Coca-cola glass is desirable when they cannot imagine it.

The 37 acre estate and house was purchased in 1941 by Madame Ganna Walska, an operatic diva who never really found success on the stage. In her personal life the same could be said for she married seven times before her death at 100 years of age in 1984. However, she was among the most charismatic of people, gifted with great irresistible beauty of body and mind.

She came to California from Europe seeking a life in our mild climate that was far removed from that of the Old World. The plants and the very earth in which they dwelled would bear little resemblance to the staid old gardens of colder climates. Instead, this garden would become a living stage where she, the director, would conceive each and every set filled with exotic forms, colors and textures as though it was a whimsical fantasy.

Madame Walska's most powerful inspiration was clearly fueled by a lifelong enchantment with the far east, and with Buddhism, a faith inextricably linked to the lotus plant. Her first name for the estate was Tibetland to match her collection of Tibetan esoterica, but later changed to a title that honored her favorite flowers. The lotus is indeed the universal symbol of resurrection and the afterlife, perfect for Ganna Walska's botanical heaven.

Despite the fact that Lotusland contained the largest lotus pond in southern California at the time, today it is filled with water lilies of every size and hue. But her interest extended beyond water plants to the fascinating forms and colors of far less water dependent species, the cacti which fill this garden in the most unlikely ways. It was a garden to amaze and wonder her many sophisticated international visitors at first, with a kaleidoscope of plants from far corners of the globe. But as Madame Walska aged she entertained less, remaining at home behind the walls to forever expand the garden. Perhaps there she indeed found the kind of nirvana that is so crucial to meditative life and inner peace.

Lotusland is really a sort of display case for this woman's plant collections. Virtually every species was clearly labeled with genus, species, and land of origin. Her knowledge of cacti, succulents, the very primitive cycads and palms must have been extensive, and when these are combined with more traditional broadleaf plants the result is at first incongruous, but then logical and dynamic. Furthermore, she understood the scale required to make bold statements in a very large landscape, where the brush strokes must be clear and sizeable in order to be fully perceived. Not one cactus, not a dozen but perhaps a hundred or more is required to achieve her end.

Clearly the most unusual element in this entire site is the swimming pool, a piece of work that will leave any professional designer feeling grossly inadequate. A white plaster kidney shape wraps around a round peninsula filled with South African aloes and euphorbias which must be the most grand collection in all the western hemisphere. As if this were not enough, the succulent trunks of Dracaena draco stand capped with heads of spiny strap leaves, this odd species native to the Canaries that bled like a human being when wounded. Such blood red sap imbued the dragon tree with magical powers and the dried crystals of it were sold in Renaissance Europe when "blood of the dragon" was to be burned like incense in the window to lure back a straying lover.

As if this was not enough, the great open clams that stand like ornaments in Neptune's private spa, with chunks of slag glass glittering in the sunlight. I know she must have loved to come out under the late summer's full moon to swim nude in that surreal water where the natural iridescence of the succulents reflects the etherial light after the glimmer of day waned.

Maybe it is the cycads that make other parts of this garden seem as though they emerged from another time. These odd species are most ancient, having reached an evolutionary dead end millions of years ago. With feather-shaped fronds like a palm, they are technically conifers, producing their offspring in giant cones that rise mysteriously from the very center of the foliage head. Rare, expensive, but so meaningful in botanical terms, Madame Walska knew exactly what she wanted, and invested in what she saw as a living treasure.

Some people are born into this world with a deep desire for immortality, or at least to leave something tangible behind that will be experienced by those not yet born. It is a quality of those who seek answers internally, for their very life force is so strong it begs to be acknowledged.

The philosophy of architect Philip Johnson is so clearly expressed here: Make every building, no matter how small, a monument. Lotusland is the embodiment of this philosophy. A single woman's search for meaning fueled the irrepressible need to create, not what would please others, but what would please herself. This is vision, this risk, this very Lotusland is by far the most important garden in California, for there is more here to learn than is possible in a single lifetime.