Tag Archives: Pacific Northwest gardening

Ahbkazi Garden, color in the garden, Design trends, flowering shrubs, flowers, garden design, groundcovers, landscape design, Pacific Northwest, trees,shrubs,vines,perennials, West Coast Design, wildlife

Ahbkazi Garden – Victoria, BC.

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How many beautiful gardens can one visit on one vacation? I spent a whole day at the spectacular Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island. a couple of hours at St. Ann's Academy heritage garden and the lovely Empress Hotel rose garden is a nice place to watch the sunset over the harbor.  But I wanted more and on the outskirts of Victoria in a residential neighborhood I found the perfect garden.

Smaller and more intimate, Abkhazi Garden offers a fine example of what you can do with a large lot full of rocks and trees if you put your mind to it. Now owned by The Land Conservancy of British Columbia, the property was bought in 1946 by Peggy Pemberton Carter who recognized the possibilities on this last undeveloped lot in the neighborhood. This independent minded woman traveled to the west coast after WW II from a prisoner of war camp in Georgia, using funds she had hidden during the war in talcum powder. She married Prince Abkhazi, a Russian fellow prisoner, when he joined her in Victoria and they began to build the summer house and lay out the garden together.

Over the next 40 years, Prince and Princess Abkhazi  designed, planted and maintained the property. Peggy had lived in Shanghai before the war and it was this influence that plays out in the garden. Chinese gardens are essentially places of meditation, places to withdraw from worldly cares. This must have been very appealing to the Abkhazi's  after their experiences in prisoner of war camps. Nothing in a Chinese garden is hurried or blatant. Paths are not just a way of getting from one point to another, instead they are a way of exploring changing views that slowly shift as you walk through the garden.

As I made my way between massive glaciated rock outcroppings and under mature native Garry oak trees gorgeous views of the snow-covered Olympic mountains and the Straight of San Juan de Fuca could be seen.
Each garden "room" utilizes the natural lay of the land and has a welcoming bench for sitting and taking in the flowers. Lots of birds and butterflies were busy feeding and going about their daily activities.

Purple allium flowers the size of grapefruit caught my attention. Growing nearby, pale yellow Candelabra primula[/caption]Japanese iris bordered one of the paths. Fragrant dianthus, several varieties of campanula and euphorbia, lady's mantle and candelabra primula were all blooming and the weeping Crimson Queen Japanese maples were pruned to perfection.

More than just a collection of plants, this garden flows with the natural contours and blends the house with it's surroundings. it is a stunning example of West Coast design. The garden flows around the rock outcroppings, taking advantage of deeper pockets of soil for conifers, Japanese maples and rhododendrons. The original Lily-of-the-Valley beds still carpet a slope. Alpine plants are placed like little jewels around the boulders and woodland plants border the undulating lawns.

A small waterfall flows into a pond where 2 large turtles sunned themselves on the rock edge while a third rested on a waterlily pad, it's red ear markings picking up the dark pink color of the waterlily flower. A stand of stately white calla lilies emerged through a piece of drifwood near a resting spot. The garden is magical. One that you could imagine on your own property if you had the next 40 years to plant and maintain it.
 
It would have been  a terrible loss if the property had not been purchased in 2000 by The Land Conservancy. After the death of the Abkhazis the land was slated to become a townhouse development. This unique garden
is truly a place of wonder. a place to meditate and to withdraw from worldly cares.
 

Climate change, Pacific Northwest

Gardening in Snow in the Pacific Northwest

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It was a snowy afternoon in the Seattle area when I attempted to ferry across the Puget Sound to Whidbey Island. Whiteout conditions got the best of us so we chickened out and decided instead to go to a local arboretum and the garden of one of my sister’s friends. While the snow came down this is what I learned about local gardening in the Pacific Northwest.

This is the home of Lily-of-the-Valley shrub and heather which are blooming now.  Crocus, Siberian iris and narcissus poked valiantly through the snow. Ornamental grasses, not yet cut back, made me think of the prairie in winter. Japanese maples of every type showed off their exquisite form cloaked with a few inches of snow.  Everywhere tall evergreen trees as well as dwarf forms anchored the landscape especially in winter.

The owner of this garden turned a weedy easement that stretched along the entire back fence line into curved planting beds created from retaining walls of beautiful dry stacked local stone. Many low water use evergreen and deciduous shrubs help this gardener in the summertime.  The Japanese maple marks where a utility pole once stood. Snow covered many of the plantings but I can just picture how pretty the spirea and viburnums will be when they bloom in spring.

We grow many of the same shrubs in our gardens as I saw in the Pacific Northwest.  Water conservation is important here, too. Although this area receives lots of winter rain and snow in the mountains by summer’s end, rivers and reservoirs in the Cascades, ground water levels and collected snowmelt reserves are gone. A little rain falls in the summer but it’s still a Mediterranean climate here. Water needs of people compete with those of migrating salmon and other wildlife and vegetation. Climatologists are predicting that climate change may mean less snow pack in the future.

Color in the wintertime is priceless even if it isn’t snowing. It’s too early for the flowering cherries but a few of the plums were starting to show color. Hellebores of every color combination imaginable were blooming in most gardens although the snow weighted down the foliage. Their  flowers stood stiffly upright like the the guards at Buckingham Palace. Bergenia flower clusters braved the weather, too. Some of our common shrubs like ceanothus, abelia, barberry, mahonia, sarcoccoca, hebe, choisya, rockrose and osmanthus are also grown here.

Later, at the in the Emerald City I was treated to fabulous gardens designed using found materials, water catchment techniques, unique paving materials and slope stabilization ideas. One large display garden featured a high mountain forest setting, complete with massive waterfall and huge boulders. A 20 foot tall Japanese maple over a 100 years old dominated one corner. They like things big in this part of the country.

Another favorite garden at the show had us wishing we could transport the whole scene to our own homes. Vintage galvanized pails and wooden flats atop repurposed shelves in a shed with windows created a cozy scene surrounded by roses growing on old wood and wire fencing. Guess you had to be there to experience it’s charm.

As I write this, snow is being forecast for our own area. Maybe it’s following me. I enjoyed my trip to the Pacific Northwest and came back with lots of new ideas but there’s no place like home.