"One need not be in California long before he feels his soul beginning to stir. The air is magnetized...the consciousness awakens ...the soul must speak." Ganna Walska, the flamboyant opera singer who wrote those words in her memoir, had not merely tired of New York. After a six-week stay in the Hollywood Hills in 1940, the 53-year-old Mrs. Walska truly believed that her destiny lay in this "sunny land" where "people are decidedly more interested in your being than in your pocket."

Unfortunately, that didn't prevent "the White Lama" from getting the recently widowed Walska to marry him in the summer of '42. For the next three years, she supported Bernard (and his father), paying for his Sanskrit lessons and Ph.D. in philosophy at Columbia. That is, until he surprised her with divorce papers.

Relieved of her costly entanglement, Walska was now left with 37 acres (she had the good sense to obtain a prenup) in Santa Barbara's opulent suburb, Montecito. So with husband No. 6 (more on that later) ticked off the list, what's a diva to do -- especially one whose operatic career was less than stellar?

Taking her cue from the lotus flowers that flourished on the property, Walska renamed the place Lotusland and redirected her creative and romantic energies into transforming its overgrown brambles into an eclectic masterpiece. She had much to work with. The original owner of the property, Kinton Stevens, had used the spread, which he called "Tanglewood," as a lemon and palm nursery and cultivated numerous exotic tropical species. The Gavits from New York, who preceded Walska, added an Italianate garden, brick pathways, an eight-pointed Moorish garden, an allée of olive trees and the pink stucco villa, now enshrouded by a tangle of weeping euphorbia.

In beginning her own magnum opus, Walska sought help from Santa Barbara's best-known landscape architect, Lockwood de Forest; a local stone mason, Ozwald da Ros; and a team of gardeners and contractors. And, in 1958, she established a foundation to maintain the garden after her death, which occurred at age 97 in 1984. Then, following several years of "neighborly" negotiations, Lotusland was finally opened to the public in 1993. Closed for the winter last fall, it reopens for the season on Feb. 15.

"Please stay on the pathways at all times, turn off your cellphone, and please leave all plant materials here," docent Laurie Wolf tells our small group as we begin our tour of Lotusland's 16 gardens. With the sun conspicuously absent, some of us lament. But as Ms. Wolf points out, the overcast, foggy skies will only enhance the experience, heightening the colors of the foliage and casting an appropriately mystical air upon the already dreamlike environs.

They include the first of the "garden rooms" we explore, the Epiphyllum Garden. Created in the late '70s, it comprises a collection of hanging air plants arranged amid a backdrop of ornamental banana trees and giant Birds of Paradise. Gazing through the layers of green and breathing in the scent of moist earth, you perceive a tropical jungle, not the semi-arid desert that defines the location.

Santa Barbara receives only about 16 inches of rain a year, so you may be impressed -- or perhaps startled -- by the vast amounts of water required to keep the garden going. Luckily the property has its own well. What's more, as the country's only sustainable ornamental garden, Lotusland no longer relies on chemical fertilizers or herbicides. Of course, in Walska's day sustainability was not even an afterthought; her concern was creating an exotic garden. Not that she was trying to reproduce nature. Indeed, what distinguishes Lotusland from most other ornamental gardens is its unique -- some might say bizarre -- flourishes. Consider the topiary horse with its light-bulb eyes, or the magnetic rock onto which Walska would drop her hairpin to wow unsuspecting visitors. (And you thought all that talk about the magnetic air was mere folderol.)

You might think Walska's colorful personality would translate into an interest in flowers. But, as Ms. Wolf told us, "she wanted plants that looked good all the time. Madame was more interested in different striations of color, heights and textures." A true innovator, Walska also came up with the idea of "mass plantings," now de rigueur for every landscape designer.

Clearly, her lack of formal training allowed Walska to think outside the boxed hedge. How else could Lotusland have a world-class Japanese garden just footsteps away from a mass of cacti? Or boast an Eden-like aloe garden featuring giant clamshells mounted on coral columns? Indeed, had Walska remained true to her European sensibilities, you'd certainly not find entire gardens devoted to bromeliads and blue plants.

Nor could you amble through the otherworldly Cycad Garden with its signature koi pond. After it was installed, Walska was surprised to learn how expensive the fish were. So following an unsuccessful bargaining attempt, she had them returned. But the two-week ordeal didn't keep the koi from laying eggs, yielding a windfall of unexpected progeny.

Not so with the cycads that surrounded the pond. Walska sold a million dollars in jewelry to buy the prehistoric plants. And though Walska probably couldn't recite their botanical name, dioecious gymnosperm, she did have the foresight to obtain them before the CITES Convention made their transport across national borders illegal. The garden's 10 species come from Australia, Mexico and Africa.

But Walska didn't always seek out plants in remote locales. Ms. Wolf explained how Walska created her Dragon Tree forest by driving around the neighborhood. "When she found a good specimen, she had her chauffeur knock on the front door and offer the owner some money. If someone didn't want to sell, she usually had a case of champagne delivered and that changed their minds," Ms. Wolf said with a laugh.

Madame was born Hanna Puacz in Poland in 1887. Her mother died when she was just nine and young Hanna was sent to St. Petersburg to live with her uncle. Two weeks before her 20th birthday, she eloped with a Russian count. But soon after, she was forced to accompany her husband to a sanatorium in Switzerland, where his nighttime carousing in a local tavern induced her to leave him. On returning to St. Petersburg, she became an opera singer (and changed her name) to catch the attention of a wealthy man involved with the Imperial Opera House. They never married, but over the next quarter-century the brunette beauty added a neurologist, "the richest Bachelor in the world," a company president and a physicist to her "collection" before dropping the final curtain on Mr. Bernard.

For the unabridged story you could try tracking down her rather tortuous out-of-print memoir, "Always Room at the Top." Easier would be a trek to Lotusland for the actual tour.

Mr. Cooper is a writer living in Santa Barbara, California