Ganna Walska Lotusland

A successful Polish singer and six-times-married socialite, Madame Ganna Walska purchased a 37-acre estate in Montecito in 1941 and spent the next four decades creating Lotusland, a garden and spiritual retreat teeming with more than 3,400 diverse, exotic, and whimsical plant species. Following Walska's death in 1984, Lotusland became a nonprofit botanical garden, opening its doors to the public in 1993. Since then, Lotusland has wowed visitors from all over the world with its impressive, splashy collection of plants, and it offers K-12, university and community educational programing. Above all else, Lotusland strives to provide guests with an understanding of and appreciation for the critical role that plants play in our lives and in the wellbeing of our planet.