Day Five: Alnwick Gardens

With the weather remaining thankfully dry this afternoon we headed the short distance from the castle to the gardens. The first garden at Alnwick was laid down in 1750 by the 1^st Duke of Northumberland, who employed Capability Brown, to landscape the parkland adjoining Alnwick Castle. The 3^rd Duke was a plant collector, and led a century of development at Alnwick - he brought seeds from over the world, and pineapples were raised in hothouses. In the middle of the 19th century, the 4^th Duke created an Italianate garden featuring a large conservatory, and at the end of the century, the gardens were at their grandest, with yew topiary, avenues of limes and acres of flowers.

During World War II’s Dig for Victory campaign, the garden was turned over and provided food, and soon afterwards the austerity of the 20th century saw the garden fall into disrepair. It was closed as a working garden in 1950. The current and 12th Duchess of Northumberland instigated redevelopment of the garden in 1997 with the first phase opening in 2001.

Even to the untrained eye (i.e ours!) these gardens were impressive and it seems half the county had turned out to enjoy them. I must say that it was a little too cool for us to be frolicking in the water features but this didn’t stop the local children from indulging. Those poor little tikes actually thought this was summer weather! (and their parents obviously couldn’t read the danger signs on some of the fountains either!)

The entrance to the gardens with the Grand Cascade behind us

Making our way through the bamboo formed tunnel of the Labyrinth

The Ornamental Garden; a structured garden brimming with plants. The garden beds are boxed with pleached crab apples.

The Cherry Orchard is planted with hundreds of Taihaku cherry trees. The Taihaku is also known as the great white cherry because of its large white blossom, and The Alnwick Garden is the only place in the UK to see the Taihaku planted in such numbers. Each April or May, the Orchard becomes a beautiful bank of white flowers, with the petals falling like snow. The trees are underplanted with six hundred thousand pink Mistress tulips, and pathways meander amongst them. Colourful azalea borders are planted at the Orchard’s edge.

The Grand Cascade is the largest water feature of its kind in the country. It is built into two listed earth banks from the 1850s, which create the garden’s slope (who knew that you could even have a listed earth bank). Every minute, 7260 gallons of water tumble down a series of 21 weirs, with riotous water displays on the hour and the half hour. Jets of water shoot high in the air and splash on the terrace as children run underneath them (though our children were warned not to get wet – yeh right!)

Check out that ‘riotous water display’

The Grand Cascade is surrounded by hornbeam pergolas with windows looking onto the water.

While we were free to wander the majority of the garden at will, we had to join a guided tour to enter perhaps the most interesting ‘room’, The Poison Garden. Our guide was quite open about the instructional uses of this garden in educating youth about the dangers of drugs. He also provided some very interesting stories about how some of these plants have been used over time.

The Garden features many plants grown unwittingly in back gardens and in the British countryside, as well as many more unusual varieties including belladonna, tobacco and mandrake. The Alnwick Garden has a Home Office licence to grow some very special plants; the cannabis and coca, which are found behind bars in giant cages.

Taking in the Ricinus Communis (or caster oil plant0

According to the 2007 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, this plant is the most poisonous in the world because of the toxicity of raw castor beans due to the presence of ricin. A dose as small as a few grains of salt can kill an adult. Ricin has been involved in a number of incidents, including the high-profile assassination of Georgi Markov using a weapon disguised as an umbrella.

Our last port of call for the day was the garden’s Tree house. The kids had a ball running across rope bridges and climbing to the roost.

The enormous and beautifully crafted Treehouse is built from sustainably sourced Canadian cedar, Scandinavian redwood and English and Scots pine. It sits high in the treetops in a copse of mature lime trees.

It was around 3pm by this time and we were all pretty much exhausted. We stopped at the local co-op on the way back to the B&B for some afternoon tea before settling in for a siesta. We dined this evening at Piccolinos, of Italian persuasion. We were a little concerned about the authenticity of the food until Papa left the kitchen to say Buona Sera to all the customers– yep, this was real Italian but what else would you expect in a small market town in Northumberland! We took a stroll after dinner to walk off our meal before heading back and crashing for the night.