blue garden

Madame Walska selected only plants with silvery to blue-gray foliage when she began planning her blue garden with Ralph Stevens in 1948. Located in the heart of Lotusland, it became one of Madame Walska’s iconic gardens.

Blue atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica ‘Glauca’) and towering Chilean wine palms (Jubaea chilensis) stand above a ground cover planting of blue fescue (Festuca ovina var. glauca) and succulent chalk sticks (Senecio mandraliscae). Mexican blue palm (Brahea armata) and other silvery to blue-gray plants act as accents.

Queensland kauri (Agathis robusta), bunya-bunya (Araucaria bidwillii), and hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii), all conifers from Australia, are at the rear of the garden. Two camphor trees (Cinnamomum camphora), native to China and Japan, are also highlights.

Blue-green glass slag line the pathways here, and in many of the other shady gardens at Lotusland. Its color appealed to Madame Walska, who purchased it from the Arrowhead Spring Water bottling factory, which chipped it out of its kilns.