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If your summer includes a  trip to Southern California, consider taking a garden tour in the resort town of Santa Barbara.  While there are beautiful gardens everywhere in the city, here are four extraordinary gardens to visit and enjoy.

Several years ago after the very severe, prolonged drought in Santa Barbara, their Parks Department converted a large part of the Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden to a low-water usage demonstration garden.  The photo, above, gives a vista of the older, central part of the garden where low water usage is not the dominant theme.

In the outer sections of the garden the emphasis is on drought-tolerant plantings.  You will see beautiful examples of flower borders and dry creek beds, as well as plants to use in dry shady areas.  Dry, shade is one of the most challenging environments for low-water usage gardens because plants that like shade usually like lots of water. The photo, left,  shows a variety of ornamental fescue lining a dirt path. leading to a rocky dry creek bed.

Happily, the Park Department includes a brochure and detailed plant list in a box near the southwest corner of the garden to aid visitors in plant identification and horticultural requirements of the plants.  The Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden is appropriately located at Garden and Arrellaga streets in Santa Barbara and there are plenty of places to simply sit and enjoy the beauty of the garden.  There is no entry fee at this public park.

As you make your way from the Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden to the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, you will pass by the Santa Barbara Mission Rose Garden. It is definitely not low water usage, but the roses are especially beautiful at this time of year. If you are a rose lover, this garden is worth a stop.  There is no entry fee.

The route to the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden from the Mission Rose garden is well marked.  Just follow the signs up Mission Canyon.  This 78 acre botanic garden is devoted to native plants of all regions and ecosystems of California.  Near the entrance, there is a small area devoted to plants of the  Great Basin, Mojave, and Sonoran deserts.  Also near the entrance is a glorious meadow garden that blooms beautifully from March through May.  California poppies, Eschscholzia californica, – which do well in desert flower borders and re-seed themselves year after year – compete with native sunflowers, salvias and grasses to give visitors a view of a sea of color.  (California poppies will thrive in your desert garden, too.)

A mile long trail through the Botanic Garden takes you from the desert through the meadow to the cool redwood grove then down an oak tree lined path and back to a low water usage demonstration garden.  Along the way you will find many benches that allow you to simply sit and enjoy the peaceful environment. They offer guided tours daily at 2 p.m. and have a garden shop and wonderful book store.  There is a small entry fee.

As you make your way back down into the city on Garden Street, you will see the restoration of the old Presidio of Santa Barbara in progress. No garden to note, but an excellent glimpse into the original European settlement of the city. The Santa Barbara Historic Society is a block away on Garden. The photo, left, shows a stack of adobe bricks for use in the rebuilding.

You will have to call ahead and make reservations  to visit the Lotusland, the amazing garden of opera singer Ganna Walska in the Montecito area of Santa Barbara.  The two daily tours of the garden are lead by docents and there is a fee. Demand for the tours--the only way to see the garden-- is high so call well in advance.

On part of her estate Miss Walska created a traditional formal garden with high hedges, a rose walk and reflecting pool.  But it is her private plant collections that are astonishing!  If she liked a plant, she bought dozens of them no matter what the cost or rarity.  Palms, bromeliads, cycads, aloes, a blue garden, a water garden, a Japanese garden, an Australian garden, topiaries -- they all reflect her personal gardening passions and they will take your breath away. 

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