When I saw that there was a place in Victoria called “Abkhazi Gardens” I had to learn more.  Abkhazia is a region of the Republic of Georgia that was invaded and is occupied by the Russians.  I advised a radio station that was about 7 kilometers from the Russian checkpoints.  I have Abkhaz refugee friends scattered around the world. As it happens the story of these gardens is also a story of refugees. 

Peggy Pemberton-Carter was a Paris socialite, originally from the European expat community in Shanghai.  She met Prince Nicholas Abkhazi, a Georgian nobleman exiled by the Soviets in 1920’s Paris.  They established a friendship.  Peggy’s guardian (her parents had died) was a world traveler and Peggy traveled with her.  Peggy and Nicholas maintained a global correspondence.   She ended up back in Shanghai just in time for the Japanese Invasion.  Peggy was interned in a Japanese camp, as was the British/Czech playwright Tom Stoppard.  Both wrote about their experiences, Stoppard in the screenplay “Empire of the Sun” and Pemberton-Carter in “A Curious Cage” (which we bought today.)  She wrote the book from her diary which she kept surreptitiously while prisoner.  She also hid a stash of traveler’s cheques in a tin of talcum. They would come into play later.

Abkhazi had enlisted in the French Army and was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Germany.  When released from the POW camp he wrote to Peggy at every address that she had once visited in her travels.  He had no idea if she survived the war.

After the war, Peggy’s Traveler’s cheques were, amazingly, still good and she purchased a ticket to San Francisco.  From there she traveled to Victoria to visit friends and recuperate.  She liked Victoria and, for $1800, bought a rocky plot of land.

In 1946 one of Nicholas’s letters reached her.  She met him in New York, he proposed, and they married in Victoria.  They decided to dedicate their lives to building a garden on the property. 

The first house, the “summer house” was tiny.  From there they built the main house, that is now a tea house.

Nicholas passed first, then Peggy. They had no children so left the property to the gardener.  He couldn’t maintain it so sold it to a developer who planned to tear up the garden and build 12 townhouses.  The neighbors objected.  Some of them took out second mortgages to buy the land, at above market value, and put it into a land conservancy to save the garden and protect the neighborhood from townhouses.  I wonder what they think of the tour buses that park on their narrow street now.

The garden is a delight.  In a relatively small space paths wind around each other, sheltered from the sight of the next path by trees, shrubs and flowers.  It does not feel like a formal garden but rather a tangle of serendipitous paths through a small wood.

After a stroll through the gardens, we took “high tea” at the main house.  Victorians like to say they are more English than the English and live behind Canada’s “tweed curtain.”  We’ve taken High Tea in Victoria several times at the Empress Hotel, and enjoyed the same types of scones, clotted cream and cucumber s sandwiches. (Well, Suzi enjoyed the sandwiches.  I can’t abide cucumbers.) This tea was more relaxed and homier.

There is a PS to this blog post.  We watched the ferryboat Coho sail into Victoria harbor, and later in the afternoon saw her docked at the inner harbor.  The Coho was designed by Spaulding and Associates and built by Puget Sound Bridge and Drydock.  She is the prototype for queen class of BC ferries and the three Alaska sisters, the Matanuska, the Malaspina and the Taku.  The Taku was sent to the breakers years ago.  The Mal and the Mat both gained new profiles when they were lengthened and received new funnels.  The Coho looks like the Alaska ships when I first rode on them.  It was like seeing an old friend.