Lotusland and More: 6 Gorgeous Spring Gardens to Enjoy in Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara may be known as "The American Riviera" for its oceanfront views (not to mention its wine country), but did you know it's also a world-class destination for horticulture?
Whether you're seeking a wonderland of succulents, an explosion of fragrance and color, or simply a serene setting to live your best garden life, Santa Barbara and its surrounding communities offer fascinating flora — often surrounded by gorgeous architecture, intriguing history and breathtaking views.
These beautiful blooms and tantalizing trees are enough to satisfy your yen for a spring adventure on your own, with the kids, or even just as a treat for mom.
Here's how to prepare for your visit, what you'll find and how to make the most of your time there.
1. Ganna Walksa Lotusland
Widely considered one of the 10 best gardens in the world, Ganna Walska Lotusland feels like a world away — even though it's just 100 miles northwest of Downtown Los Angeles and about 3 miles northeast of Downtown Santa Barbara. You'll find it in the seaside village of Montecito, nestled in the foothills of Los Padres National Forest.
Lotusland was founded by and is named after Polish opera singer Madame Ganna Walska, who purchased the 27-acre estate (formerly a palm and lemon tree nursery) in 1941. After having experimented with landscape design and gardening while living in Paris, she transformed the property into the "botanical nirvana" it is today — the result of 43 years of constant work, until her death at the age of 97 in 1984.
Lotusland, which opened to the public in 1993, isn't just one garden — but an Eden-esque collective of multiple gardens, each with their own microenvironments and microclimates (and, in the case of the Cycad Garden, some of the rarest and oldest plants on earth). As a result of the "mass planting" that occurred under Madame Walska's direction, each garden is thick with vegetation — which creates plenty of ground cover and, in the case of the Dracaena Circle (which is full of dragon trees a.k.a. Dracaena draco), a shadowy canopy.
The ornamental gardenscapes go way beyond blooms and botanical wonders — also including tile, pebble mosaics, water features, statuary (like the stone "grotesques" in the Theatre Garden) and the "Horticultural Clock."
Open Wednesday through Saturday seasonally. Lotusland requires advance reservations to be made for all visits, tours (both docent-led and self-guided) and events; and it recommends that they be made three to four weeks in advance. Same day reservations are not available. Check the Lotusland website for its current COVID-19 policies and the local weather conditions.
2. The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Located in Santa Barbara's Mission Canyon, The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden began in 1926 as just 13 acres — and has grown to a total of 78 acres, including more than 5 miles of walking trails. Eschewing exotic plantings, this botanic garden takes you on a journey through California rather than around the world. In fact, it was the first botanic garden in the U.S. to focus exclusively on native plants! Among the thriving trees are a variety of oaks — the common coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia, or encinos), as well as scrub oaks, the deciduous California Black Oak and the exceedingly uncommon (and evergreen) island oak, generally found elsewhere only on the Channel Islands.
In the Meadow and on the Porter Trail (formerly the Ceanothus section), you'll find wildflowers growing in the spring — with California poppies, lupine, prairie flax, and more making a showy scene in oranges, yellows, purples and so on. On the Campbell Trail (in the Chaparral Section), look for lots of California natives that bloom annually (even after fire), like monkeyflower, sacred datura, buckwheat, mallow, desert marigold, tufted evening primrose and sumac. And in the Desert Section, there are flowering trees like the desert-willow and palo verde, blooming shrubs like chuparosa and jojoba, and blossoming cacti.
Coming in June 2022 is an immersive "Backcountry" area. It's designed for kids age 5 to 13 — but it's where visitors of all ages will be able to go wild in a 4-acre dedicated garden section west of Mission Creek, where fallen trees and boulders from the 2018 Montecito debris flow have been integrated into the otherwise unstructured experience. The main jumping-off point will be just over the historic Campbell Bridge. You can download the garden's digital map to find your way.
April is the beginning of the garden's "busy season," so consider visiting on a less-trafficked weekday or any day after 2 p.m. Once the garden reaches its capacity limit for the day, it must turn away visitors. So, advance reservations are required for non-members and recommended for members. Parking is limited, so guests are encouraged to carpool.
Open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with last admission at 4:30 p.m. (Members-only hour occurs daily from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.) Dogs on leash are welcome to enter with gratis admission. For garden etiquette and safety advisories, click here. For COVID-19 protocols and other guidelines for visitors, click here.
3. Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden
A jewel in the crown of the Santa Barbara City Parks and Recreation Department, Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden is located on 4.6 acres of what was once known as Plaza Alameda — and later, the site of artist Albert Herter's El Mirasol mansion, which become El Mirasol Hotel.
After the hotel was razed in the late 1960s, the property changed hands many times — and, at one point, was even slated to be the site of an expanded Santa Barbara Museum of Art. But in 1975, heiress Alice Bertha Keck Park — daughter of William M. Keck, founder of Superior Oil Company — anonymously purchased the land and donated it to the city to be used as a public garden. No one knew the benefactor's identity until after her death in 1977.
The city chose landscape architect Grant Castleberg of Castleberg Associates to design the park, under the direction of supervising landscape architect Elizabeth Kellam de Forest. The garden opened to the public in 1980 — and today, there are at least 75 different tree and plant species in the park, which takes up an entire city block between Santa Barbara Street to the west, Arrellaga Street to the north, Garden Street to the east, and Micheltorena Street to the south.
Some of original plants have been replaced with those chosen specifically to be drought-tolerant — and you can find them in both shaded and sunny areas. The well-manicured park offers a rainbow of colors, thanks to flowering bulbs (like freesia and irises), a bougainvillea bed and showstopping blooms from camellias, Australian fuchsia, hibiscus, sea lavender and more. Among the flowering trees are pink trumpet, golden trumpet and multiple types of coral.
Paved walkways meander between a meadow, a lawn, a manmade koi pond with a gazebo and a sensory garden (whose audio tour can be enjoyed via speakers installed at numbered stations). There are plenty of places to find a seat for a family picnic or some quiet alone time. For more on some of the garden's sustainable landscape practices, check out the low water-using demonstration garden.
Open sunrise to a half hour past sunset. Street parking only. Leashed dogs are allowed, but please clean up after your pet.
4. Casa del Herrero
Visiting Casa del Herrero, also in Montecito, is like getting a lovely slice of Spain, just outside of the City of Santa Barbara. Also known as the "House of the Blacksmith," it was the home of George Fox Steedman and his wife Carrie Howard — a pair of well-to-do Midwestern industrialists who moved out West from St. Louis. Steedman was the "blacksmith" — a munitions manufacturer and metalsmith who served as president of the Curtis Manufacturing Company, a one-time producer of saws and pneumatic machines that switched its operations to shell forging. He made most of the metalwork at the Steedman Estate (including wrought iron gates, window grilles, balconies and aluminum patio furniture emblazoned with an image of a centaur, symbolizing Steedman himself).
The 11-acre estate fits squarely within the American Country Place movement — which, with touches like a birdhouse sundial, brought a taste of Europe to the rough West Coast. Your visit will start at the palm-lined, pebbled motor court that surrounds an octagonal tiled Moorish fountain. After you walk through the gated, whitewashed stucco garden walls and around to the back, the land slopes gently downhill behind the house, allowing water from an artesian well to pool into a tiled peacock, surrounded by citrus orchards.
The cruciform main garden and its surrounding spaces — inspired by Moorish gardens of the Palacio de Generalife and the Alhambra in Granada — were originally created by Ralph Stevens (who also worked on Lotusland) and later expanded by Lockwood de Forest and Francis T. Underhill, who completed the project in 1933. The walled gardens have all these different tiled environments that act like open-air "rooms," designed in the Spanish style to provide unexpected visual surprises, revealed only as you stroll through an arch or around a bend in the path.
After Steedman died in 1940, the 11-acre estate remained largely unaltered — though his widow continued to live there until her death in 1962 and it was maintained as a private residence until 1987.Casa del Herrero was designated a national landmark in 2009.
Guided tours of the gardens and the interior of the mansion are offered to visitors age 10 and up on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., rain or shine. Advance reservations are required and can be made online. For current COVID-19 safety protocols, check the website.
5. Aloes in Wonderland
What began as the private home and appointment-only nursery of Jeff Chemnick — a botanical buff whose green thumb has expanded into over 4 acres across two property lots — is now open to the public as a botanic garden, with guided tours led by Chemnick himself.
But this is no ordinary botanic garden. At Aloes in Wonderland, every single plant — even those already in the ground — is for sale (except one). Chemnick can even arrange labor to dig out your plant for you — but most likely you'll need to transport your purchase yourself.
During your visit, you can expect to see some succulents, like aloes (of course), huge agave plants (with at least 10 years of growth) and cacti — some of which may be flowering, depending on the time of year (or, in the case of cactus plants, which day you arrive). But one of the biggest draws to Aloes in Wonderland is Chemnick's selection of rarities — like mature coning-sized cycads (one of the largest private collections of these ancient plants in existence) and rare hybrids.
Chemnick can customize your tour based on your specific interests and whether you're coming in totally new to plants or your knowledge base is more advanced. If you're shopping so you can create your own dream garden, you can select fully established specimens or plants at pretty much any other stage of development — like pups (basically, shoots), seedlings, or even seeds. And while you're there, don't get so distracted by the flora that you miss out on the most stunning view of Santa Barbara you may ever see.
Submit your request for a private tour on the Aloes in Wonderland website. The tour fee can be credited toward one plant purchase per person, but no purchase is necessary. While being open to the public, Aloes in Wonderland and its nurseries is open by appointment only, so plan ahead. For a sneak preview of your visit, check out the online virtual tour.
6. Mission Rose Garden
Located within the 10-acre Mission Historical Park — on land that the City of Santa Barbara purchased in 1928 — you'll find the Mission Rose Garden, once recognized as a top municipal rose garden in the nation. It began with 500 rose bushes in 1955 — and in 1992, it was rechristened to honor its supporter Mrs. A.C. Postel on her 100th birthday.
Today, the rose garden touts over 1,500 rose plants, which are maintained throughout the year by members of the Santa Barbara Rose Society (which has sponsored the garden since 1962), Santa Barbara Parks & Recreation staff, and community volunteers.
The (mostly) white, pink and yellow roses carry compelling names like "First Light," "Pillow Fight," and "Distant Drums" — and some are named after celebrities, like the "Marilyn Monroe" and "Henry Fonda" cultivars. Many of the roses are past All-American Rose Selections (A.A.R.S.) winners, like the "Rainbow Knock Out" variety.
Please leave the roses for all to enjoy and don't cut or pick them. Keep the rose garden paths clear and instead picnic outside the garden on the park's big lawn. Although the rose garden is adjacent to Old Mission Santa Barbara, admission is free and daily open hours are sunrise to a half-hour past sunset. Plenty of street parking available.
