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Tanglewood
The estate began as a nursery called Tanglewood in 1882
Ralph Kinton Stevens bought the land in 1882 and named it Tanglewood, after its abundance of oak and chaparral. In 1893 he was the first in California to publish a nursery catalog solely for tropical and subtropical plant material.
Pink walls
The Gavit family added the main residence in 1919 and Smith added pink walls
In 1916 the Gavit family, from Albany, New York, renamed the estate Cuesta Linda. The main residence was designed in 1919 by Reginald Johnson in the Mediterranean Revival style. George Washington Smith added the water garden pool house, the stable and the distinctive pink walls.
Tibetland
An opera singer named it Tibetland and then Lotusland
Opera singer Madame Ganna Walska owned the property from 1941 and created the gardens over four decades. She first named it Tibetland, meaning to invite Tibetan monks to live there. After her divorce from Theos Bernard in 1946 she kept the property and renamed it Lotusland.
The gardens
The Cycad Garden holds over 900 specimens, some extinct in the wild
The Cycad Garden was completed in 1979 with over 200 species of cycads and has since grown to over 900 specimens. It includes three Encephalartos woodii, among the world's rarest cycads. In the Blue Garden, the paths are lined with chunks of blue-green glass.
900specimens of cycads in the collection today, at least
Day 3, morning
Next is Andree Clark Bird Refuge.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Lotusland, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.
