Something to Crow About
The owners of Villa Corbeau get their hands dirty while creating a breathtaking, regenerative garden
Written by Lorie Dewhirst Porter | Photography by Michael Haber
“We drove up here and walked into this house, and both of us started crying.”
“My husband keeps telling me, ‘You spend so much time with dirt!’” says Ashley Adelson, “but I tell him that our dirt is the best dirt.” That is no exaggeration. Ashley is the proud owner of six compost bins, in addition to a commercial-size worm bin. “We take the green waste and the chicken guano, and we do runs to the polo field and get horse manure, and we get kelp from the ocean to make this concoction—it usually takes four weeks—and then we feed it into the soil.” She smiles contentedly and adds, “Composting is my favorite thing ever.”
With her Grace Kelly features and fluency in French, one might not expect Ashley Adelson to enjoy getting her hands dirty, but she’s become a passionate gardener since relocating to Montecito from Los Angeles with her husband, Scott Adelson, in 2020. The pair fell in love with a property designed and formerly owned by renowned architect Marc Appleton. “We drove up here and walked into this house, and both of us started crying,” Ashley recalls. “We realized it was the dream home we always wanted.”
A view of the garden and the pool casita, which Ashley converted into a 12-person dining room.
It’s easy to understand why. As Appleton described in View magazine in 2019, “The architecture is quietly classical with stone and plaster walls, salvaged European clay-tile roofs, stained wood doors and windows manufactured in Italy, and distressed French oak and limestone floors.” His creation bears the name Villa Corbeau (“crow” in French) “in jest, after the resident crows that are prevalent in the neighborhood,” he said.
The Adelsons acquired and moved into Villa Corbeau just as the pandemic took hold. With lockdown in effect, Ashley began decorating the interiors herself, sourcing European furniture online. She converted the pool casita into a 12-person dining room, expanded the wine cellar (the couple owns two wineries in Oregon), and managed to get the overhead electrical power lines buried underground (no small feat). And then the gardening bug hit.
“We recycle everything back into the soil.”
“I’m a lifelong learner, and I really get into things,” Ashley says modestly, before divulging that she took no fewer than 30 online classes from the New York Botanical Garden, as well as landscape and horticultural classes at UCLA. She then began consulting local experts, like the Santa Barbara Beekeepers Guild (Villa Corbeau has four beehives) and permaculture guru David White of Ojai’s Center for Regenerative Agriculture. There was more. “We brought in 35 new roses and planted 108 dahlias. I developed a fern gully—that’s where the bees live. We expanded the chicken coop and put in a chicken run, so the chickens can leave the coop and run in a circle. And we recycle everything back into the soil.” And while it’s hard to imagine she has any free time, Ashley is also on the Board of Trustees at Ganna Walska Lotusland.
Originally from Huntington Beach, Ashley graduated from Chapman University and moved to Europe for nine years, attending graduate school at the Sorbonne University in Paris. She worked for an active travel company and did stints in England, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, and Vietnam. She and Scott met on one of her work trips in 2012 and remained in touch. Over time, their friendship turned to romance and the couple married seven years later. Scott grew up in Los Angeles and, after graduating from USC, attended the University of Chicago for his MBA. He is co-president of Houlihan Lokey, an international investment bank. A dedicated philanthropist, Scott established the Adelson Foundation to help preserve art and culture throughout the world.
The couple travels extensively—23 countries in 2022 alone—and entertains frequently. As Ashley says, “I feel that Montecito is a magical little place, where you meet the most interesting, fascinating, lovely, genuine, real people.”
