Are cycads—not diamonds—a girl’s best friend? When one considers the glimmering, étourdissant life and equally brilliant horticultural legacy of Madame Ganna Walska, the patroness of Montecito’s Lotusland, it appears so.
In the decades she spent inhabiting high society both in Europe and America, the Polish-born Walska developed a fancy deeper than any of her myriad other interests. She had her music, for instance: Walska was an aspiring opera singer and even owned Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, a gift from her fourth husband. She loved the decorative arts, from tilework to miniature limestone statuary—grotesques—that she used to theatrical effect at her Paris château. And she adored jewelry. Starting her collecting life (and third marriage) at the age of 33 with an open account at Cartier, the stylish ingenue exercised her taste for the grand gesture. A 95-plus carat Cartier briolette diamond pendant and nearly 198-carat cushion-shaped blue sapphire once belonging to a czarina both made their way into her cache, as did a flair for the dramatic—her rings were known to overwhelm her small hands—and bold creations with cultural influences from India and the Middle East. But in the final analysis, Walska must have loved plants most.
The evidence is Lotusland—the 37-acre now-public garden she purchased in 1941. Originally a commercial nursery and later an estate with orchards and formal gardens, the property with the pale pink stucco home at its heart grew in scale, scope, and imagination in the care of Walska, who named it to honor her lifelong interest in spiritual journeying and the sacred flowers afloat in one of its ponds. (Lotusland was also a deft rebrand from “Tibetland,” which Walska and her sixth and final husband, Hatha yoga pioneer Theos Bernard, dubbed their planned retreat for Tibetan lamas. World War II made it impossible for the lamas to travel, and the couple divorced in 1946. Lotusland it became.)
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Walska’s cultivation of Lotusland was immediate and indefatigable. She brought in plantsmen and garden designers not only to revive and reimagine gardens she’d inherited (including a soulful olive allée, a whimsical collection of topiaries, and a rose-rich parterre) but also to build out garden room after garden room (25 eventually) that broke nearly every rule of horticultural propriety. Walska piled up single species in intimate spaces, and she celebrated plants little valued by her compatriots such as aloes, cacti, and bromeliads. The rarer the plant, the more she wanted it, and she wanted as many as she could get her hands on. She was gardening’s first and greatest maximalist.
But in the late 1960s, she reached a crossroads. Keen to amass a collection of cycads—the rare primordial species with squat trunks and no flower to flaunt its worth—Walska lacked the liquidity to buy them up. And so, gathering up 146 spectacular pieces of her jewelry, she went to market. In 1971, The Important Jewelry Collection of Madame Walska auction at Parke-Bernet in New York generated a stunning near-million dollars, which she poured into cycads.
The auction’s legacy is twofold: The Walska collection was scooped up by aficionados like Doris Duke and dealers like Harry Winston, its stunning gems acquired and reset by Van Cleef & Arpels and Cartier. Second, and perhaps more importantly, Lotusland’s Cycad Garden became home to 450-plus specimens and represents nearly half of the species known to exist. It was the last garden Walska made before her death in 1984.
And that horticultural legacy endures and thrives. Reopened as a public garden in 1993, Lotusland remains a vibrant homage as well as a center for species preservation and scholarship, with more than 3,400 types of plants and at least 35,000 specimens. But at its heart are those remarkable cycads that speak for one collector’s driving passion for cultivating beauty. Of a woman who gave up one kind of riches for another and, by doing so, ensured we might also claim an ancient plant as our best friend.
See Stunning Jewelry from Madame Ganna Walska's Collection
Three Ways to Discover Lotusland
READ up on its riches in the aptly named Lotusland, a sumptuous look at Walska’s grand vision, published this spring by Rizzoli.
VISIT for a self-guided or docent-led tour, which are offered Wednesday through Saturday. Reservations required.
SUPPORT by becoming a Lotusland member, joining one of its Garden Lover Circles, or making a donation at lotusland.org.
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2022 issue of VERANDA. Photography by Lisa Romerein; produced by Rachael Burrow; written by Tracey Minkin.
