Linda Lissy, a gardener and landscaper for scores of Santa Barbara customers in the 1980s and 1990s, died of heart failure in her sleep last month at her cabin in the Eastern Sierra. She was 79 years old.
A devout Catholic, Linda had two missions in life: to create beauty in public and private gardens, and to look after her many elderly clients, for whom she was both a gardener and a companion.
For nearly 40 years, Linda worked for the sisters of the Monastery of Poor Clares in Santa Barbara, who observe a vow of silence. One day, she left them a note at Mass, offering them her services, and they allowed her to enter the cloister grounds at 215 E. Los Olivos St., covering nearly two-thirds of the block, as a rare public visitor. She trimmed the hedges and pruned the roses.
“Linda was very, very special, very gracious to us,” the Mother Abbess said. “She liked the silence, the solitude and prayerfulness, and being able to work in nature by herself. She loved our dogs, too, and would bring treats in her pocket.”
Linda cultivated a large following of devoted customers as well who depended on her to plant their fruit trees, prune their orchards and design their flowerbeds.
In 2003, priced out of the high rent market in Santa Barbara, Linda purchased a seasonal cabin on U.S. Forest Service land near Tom’s Place, off Owens Gorge Road. She had to re-create her gardening business from scratch. During the winter, Linda would return to Santa Barbara to live in the Poor Clares’ guest house and revisit her old customers.
In Bishop, California, people knew her as the “Flower Lady,” easily recognizable in her broad-brimmed straw hat and aviator glasses. She created colorful displays at the local pharmacy, Catholic church and for her private customers, many of whom were elderly and lived alone.
Linda liked to keep to herself and rarely accepted social invitations, in part because her work, which included mowing lawns, was physically exhausting. She worked on June 28, her last day on this Earth, as she always said she would.
“She will be a real hard act to follow,” said Liz Merrill, owner of the Home Street Garden Center in Bishop, where many of her own customers closely followed what Linda was planting and when. “No one will ever replace what she did. It was such a personal commitment on her part.”
Linda was born on Feb. 1, 1947 in Los Angeles. In her youth, she was a tennis champion and collected a roomful of trophies. A consummate athlete, she later excelled at cycling, cross-country skiing and long-distance hiking.
In the 1970s, after graduating from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in physical education, Linda bicycled from Los Angeles to Canada, hitchhiked across America and studied Hinduism in India. Later on, she converted to Catholicism and tried out for convents, but they weren’t a good match for her fierce sense of independence and cantankerous ways.
Linda worked stints as a tennis pro and assistant to a physical therapist before starting her own gardening business in Santa Barbara in the late 1970s.
Linda charged modest rates for her work and lived on the margins, even as she gave so much of herself to others. Some customers, in turn, helped Linda in her last years, including the Texan who allowed her to stay at his Bishop home during wintertime, the Bishop man who paid for a new engine for her truck and the Santa Barbara woman who left her a generous bequest.
“Everybody who knew Linda had genuine affection for her because she went out of her way to do her best for people,” said Father John Gracey of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Bishop.
Masses for the repose of Linda’s soul will be offered at the Poor Clares chapel in Santa Barbara on Dec. 13, 25 and 31. Regarding the Mass for Linda that is scheduled for Christmas Day, the Mother Abbess said: “I thought she’d like that very much, even though hopefully she’s celebrating in heaven.”
In Bishop, a group of Linda’s customers will plant a magnolia tree in her memory at Our Lady of Perpetual Help church. A funeral mass will be held for her at the church at 11 a.m. on Aug. 7.
Linda is survived by her brother, Dale, of Angelus Oaks, California; two sisters, Janet McCluer of Kingman, Ariz. and Judy Kody of Lafayette, California; nine nieces and nephews and 10 great-nieces and nephews. Donations in Linda’s memory may be made to the Poor Clares in Santa Barbara and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Santa Barbara.
