A Backyard Go to – The Abkhazi Backyard
By Marjorie Vendrig, Grasp Gardener in Coaching
Gardening is an extremely versatile passion, a passion that may transfer round with you once you transfer home or journey close to or afar. I’ve all the time made a degree of visiting gardens each time or wherever I journey. Out-of-town sporting occasions, household holidays, weddings, and even enterprise journey have all the time included visits to public gardens, arboretums, and even backyard centres. These visits are all the time aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable. On the similar time, they provide an opportunity to be taught concerning the plant materials together with some native historical past and tradition.
On a latest journey to Vancouver Island I visited the Abkhazi Backyard in Victoria. It was early October, nicely previous the glory days of summer season and much too late to benefit from the rhododendrons – the spotlight of the backyard – at their prime. That didn’t matter in any respect, the vistas have been astounding, the property an actual treasure the place gardens wind their manner over and round dramatic glaciated rock mounds. This can be a website the place the gardeners took full benefit of the topography and pure setting relatively than change it or cowl it up. It’s a one acre spot surrounded by city Victoria but every view from anyplace within the backyard carries the attention to pleasing combos of form, color, texture, and type. The principle home and summer season home have been constructed within the late 1940’s reflecting the post-war Modernist sprit, leading to an excellent integration of home and backyard. The home and backyard are rigorously built-in, the mix of the pure and designed is seamless and elegant.
The story behind the backyard is attention-grabbing as nicely. The property was initially bought by Peggy Pemberton-Carter who, in 1946, had lately arrived in Victoria after having spent the warfare in prisoner-of-war camps in China. She quickly married Nicolas Abkhazi, an exiled Georgian prince who had additionally been interned. The mix of their private privilege and hardship discovered a artistic outlet of their backyard. At first they acquired plant materials from the best nurseries, they have been mentored by distinguished horticulturalists and over the following 40 years they experimented and refined their venture.
The stroll by means of the backyard begins within the rhododendron woodland the place the native Garry oaks present the cover for species and hybrid rhododendrons. Rising nearer to the bottom are the ferns and hostas with winter aconite, fawn lilies, camas and hardy cyclamen blooming in season. There’s additionally tigridia, primula, and galtonia, together with spring flowering bulbs.
A Spanish fir tree holds place of honour at the start of a meandering inexperienced path with an immense rock outcropping on one aspect and a profusion of heather and different mounding, textural curiosity on the opposite. The trail was impressed by the Yangtze River and Peggy’s picture of it close to her childhood house. Aspect paths lead onto a number of naturally created rock ponds offering reflections of sky and different close by plantings. At every flip or change in elevation the composition is exclusive and spellbinding.
Current additions to the backyard embody a swathe of native camas and a group of vegetation indigenous to the Caucasus area, these the results of a donation from the Georgian Ambassador.
The Land Conservancy of British Columbia (TLC) bought the property in 2000 to put it aside from turning into a townhouse growth. A part of the primary room in the home has been refurbished as a Tea Home. Neighborhood assist is a big issue within the continued success and enchancment of the backyard: the entry price is by donation and a big group of enthusiastic volunteers do a lot of the work across the backyard.
