Quien Sabe Garden

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Many thanks to everyone who's helping on the hunt for this mysterious garden. I hope and think most of you are finding it fun, even those who, like me, are unlucky enough to live thousands of miles away from California!

 

So that everyone knows where we've got to, here are some recent additions to our information - sent by garden historian Susan Chamberlin (with my particular thanks to Bill Grant who passed on my queries to her):

 

>> Quien Sabe, also known as the Wright estate, still exists in Montecito, California on Buena Vista Ave.  (Montecito is an unincorporated area of Santa Barbara County.)  I don't know how much the estate or its buildings have been altered or how much property has been subdivided and sold off.  Nowadays the old estate names are applied to the houses, so even if they sit on 1/4 acre they retain their grand names.

Owned and developed by John D. Wright and his wife beginning around 1918, it had a famous cactus collection.  Landscape architect Peter Riedel is credited with the design of the gardens, although Mrs. Wright seems to have played a role too.  Riedel lived at Quien Sabe from about 1921-1925.  The Wrights left Santa Barbara for New York in 1941.

In 1927 Wright and another gentleman represented Montecito on the newly formed Santa Barbara County Planning Commission.

From 1907-1909 Riedel was associated with Dr. Franceschi in the latter's Southern California Acclimatizing Association, which Riedel acquired when their partnership ended. <<

 

From messages to this list, we also now know who the architect of the house was.

 

What we don't know, and what I'd dearly like to know, are the answers to the following questions:

 

1. Why did the Wrights leave in 41?

 

2. How was it that the Peatties were able to rent, not buy, the house and garden later in the 40s?

 

3. When did the Peatties themselves leave and what happened to the house and garden between then and now?

 

4. And what, finally, is the state of the property now? Has the garden been subdivided and built over, as Susan Chamberlin seems to suspect, or does it still to some extent remain as described by Peattie in Flowering Earth? Does anyone on the list live close enough, and have enough interest, to go to Buena Vista Avenue and find out? (How I wish I could do that on-site research myself!)

 

(I haven't posted here Peattie's extensive and atmospheric description of it in that book because I hesitated to trouble everyone with a lengthy download which might well only interest a few: but if there's general interest, just let me know and I will.)

 

Tim