Abkhazi Garden Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia Telephone (250) 598-8096

Abkhazi Photo Album

*Click Here for Hatley Gardens right next door to us *Click Here for the Butterfly Gardens

Gardens, Tea Room & Gift Shop: Wednesday - Sunday and holidays from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm from March 01 through September 30

The Abkhazi Garden, a 1.4-acre site that overlooks the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic Mountains, is internationally famous for its splendid collection of rhododendrons.

The Garden is located at 1964 Fairfield Road in Oak Bay (Victoria), BC, Canada. This is about 600 feet East of Foul Bay Road on Fairfield.

Donations to help preserve the Abkhazi garden can be made by contacting The Land Conservancy of BC toll free at 250-598-8096 or by visiting their website at www.conservancy.bc.ca. You can also purchase a home video of the CBC documentary for $29.95 plus shipping and handling by contacting The Land Conservancy of BC at their toll free number or by visiting their website.

Historically, the love affair between Prince Nicholas Abkhazi and Princess Peggy Abkhazi spanned over seven decades, three continents, and the Second World War. When they purchased this property in 1946, this long, thin strip of land was about to be subdivided. It was an overgrown, weed-infested lot! For over 40 years, the Georgian prince from Russia and his Shanghai born princess created a magnificent landscape that she would later call the “garden that love built”. The couple was childless and the garden subsequently became their pride and joy. Prince Nicholas died in 1987 and Princess Peggy died in 1994. Their ashes were scattered over the garden.

Care of the garden was entrusted to the estate’s two major benefactors- the couple’s long-time gardener, Chris Ball, and their housemaid of 15 years, Maria Camosa. The sale of the property to the gardener was a long-standing source of dispute between these two people. When the gardener was unable to afford the $30,000 annual upkeep, he sold the property to a developer for the purpose of building townhouses. Maria Camosa indicated that “Princess Abkhazi never would have wanted her beloved garden to be destroyed. She always said she wanted it to continue. They wanted something left behind that would last”. News of the impending demolition of “the garden that love built” captivated the hearts of horticulturists across the continent. The Land Conservancy of British Columbia, in an 11th hour agreement, signed a contract to buy back the property from the developer for $1.4 million. Donations from Canada, the United States, and England have come in, from as little as $10 to as much as $100,000. In addition to this, over $600,000 was raised by 12 donors who agreed to take out mortgages on the property.

Commendably, Ester Edwards, an 82-year-old pensioner, avid gardener, and retired Eaton’s store clerk, donated $1000 when told that the garden would be saved. As of the end of January, the group still needed $175,000 to repurchase the garden and another $250,000 to set up an endowment fund for the gardens ongoing maintenance. The property was formally transferred to the Land Conservancy of B.C. on February 17.

When news of the gardeners reprieve reached the ears of Maria Camosa, the couple’s long-time maid, she said that Princess Peggy Abkhazi “believed in the ever-after… I think she’s around us… she is in the garden and she’s very happy”.

This garden was prominently featured in the book In a Canadian Garden in 1989. Photographed by Freeman Patterson and written by Nicole Eaton and Hilary Weston, it vividly “shows and tells” the beauty of this garden and how it evolved. Princess Abkhazi envisioned her garden like the Yangtze River in China. The garden, like this river, gently and peacefully flows from one “room” to another. Each room is a new surprise… a new adventure.

Take this book off your coffee table or make arrangements to see the Princess Nicholas Abkhazi Garden in person. It truly is one of the most beautiful gardens in Canada… Victoria’s Garden of Love.

The garden plays up a contrast between the rock and the treed areas of deeper soil. Some of the rock is deliberately bare; some is planted with rock and alpine plants, and ornamental evergreens. Some of the deepest pockets in the rocks are carefully dammed to create pools frequented by native Mallard ducks and providing reflections of the plantings. The lower portion of the property is treed with oaks and was developed into a rhododendron copse or woodland garden. A flowing lawn, bordered by heather and a paved path skirts the point where the rock plunges into the ground. The original garden shed/summerhouse, designed by the owners, provides a focal point at the end of this long view, and a point from which to turn and appreciate the view in the opposite direction. Paved paths meander past the summerhouse and up to the higher, rocky site of the house from which a stunning view is enjoyed, not just over the garden below, but outwards over the larger Victoria landscape, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic mountains of neighbouring Washington state.

There are notable specimens of both hybrid and species rhododendrons and azaleas in the garden. Some of these were gifts to the Abkhazis from an earlier generation of Victoria area nurserymen who sought a good home for some of their more significant specimens. There are also examples of some of the hybridizing efforts of local rhododendron growers such as R.X Prince Abkhazi and R.X Peggy Abkhazi, this latter plant registered internationally with the Royal Horticultural Society in 1989. That same year Peggy was honoured by the American Rhododendron Society, when they held their conference in Victoria and a tour of the Abkhazi Garden was a conference highlight. There are also rock and alpine plants, naturalized bulbs, and good examples of Japanese Maples and weeping conifers, notable for the careful pruning and training received over the past fifty years.

The garden was begun in 1946 on the Fairfield property purchased by Peggy Pemberton Carter who came to Victoria after spending some 2 and 1/2 years in a Japanese internment camp outside Shanghai. She was soon reunited with Prince Nicholas Abkhazi (a Georgian noble family) whom she had met in Paris in the 1920s. Nicholas had also spent time as a prisoner of war in Europe. They were married in Victoria and were soon building together their garden and their modest home with an intensity and uniqueness of vision that might be fairly described as a “garden that love built”. Indeed, Princess Abkhazi referred to the garden as “their child” and to the garden making process remarking “when you are very much in love you don’t go wrong” in two interviews I had with her in 1989-90. It may fairly be stated that this garden represents a very significant part of Victoria’s horticultural heritage.

Abkhazi Photo Album