In 2020, Pamela Anderson left Hollywood and sold her California home to live on her grandmother’s 7-acre property. Now, grows vegetables and shares to churches and charities

For decades, Canadian-American model Pamela Anderson's life was closely associated with Hollywood, red carpets and the global fame that followed Baywatch. But when she wanted to rebuild her life, the actress didn't choose another celebrity enclave. The actress returned to a seven-acre family property on Vancouver Island, Canada, where gardening, renovating old buildings and growing her own food became part of an unexpected new chapter. Years later, Anderson says the garden is where she “found myself again”.

Pamela Anderson returned home to ‘disappear’

Pamela Anderson moved back to Vancouver Island around the beginning of the pandemic, returning to the area where she grew up before leaving for California and fame. Pamela told Better Homes & Gardens that she initially returned because she wanted to “disappear”, describing a period when she felt her life had become a “bundle of mistakes”. Instead, restoring her surroundings gradually became a way of rebuilding herself. Her California chapter also came to a financial close. The Hollywood diva sold her Malibu property in 2021 after listing it for $14.9 million, according to reports at the time. Her Canadian home, known as Arcady, isn't simply a countryside escape purchased after Hollywood.

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Pamela told Architectural Digest that she bought the seven-acre property from her grandparents around three decades ago. Her parents had once lived there after getting married, while her sons, Brandon and Dylan, took some of their first steps on the property. When Pamela Anderson returned, she began restoring the century-old buildings and transforming the grounds. The process later became the focus of her home-renovation series, Pamela's Garden of Eden.

Pamela's vegetable garden now covers 15,000 square feet

The biggest transformation is likely to be outside the house. Anderson's garden now includes around 15,000 square feet devoted to vegetables, according to Architectural Digest. She grows beets, radishes, lettuce, heirloom tomatoes, melons, herbs, roses and other produce. It isn't all destined for her own kitchen. Anderson said the garden produces enough to share with food banks, soup kitchens, churches, neighbours, friends and family. Gardening also influenced her plant-based cookbook, I Love You, while rose hips grown at Arcady are turned into homemade oils and beauty treatments.

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From Hollywood fame to finding herself in the soil

Anderson hasn't abandoned acting. Her acclaimed performance in The Last Showgirl brought major awards attention, while subsequent projects have returned her firmly to the screen. What changed was where she chose to build her everyday life. After decades of being recognised as one of Hollywood's most photographed women, Anderson found something valuable far from the cameras: family history, soil beneath her feet and a garden she could rebuild season after season. As she put it, “That’s where I found myself again.”