The first thing a visitor sees on arriving at the poison garden is a big, black old-fashioned wrought-iron fence surrounding the green oasis. The gates, complete with a skull-and-crossbones, has a very implicit warning: “These plants can kill.”
Behind the gates, the lush greenery is broken up with well-manicured plots between graveled paths featuring various deadly plants. Actually, there are over 100 different poisonous plants there, including cannabis, coca, and the opium poppy, papaver somniferum, under cages protected with a lock.
The poison garden is part of a complex of formal gardens adjacent to Alnwick Castle in the town of Alnwick, Northumberland, England, all designed around a central water cascade. The site includes a massive treehouse, said to be the largest in the world, a bamboo labyrinth, numerous topiaries and a pavilion and visitor center.
Harry Potter fans will also recognize Alnwick Castle, the traditional seat of the Duke of Northumberland. Alnwick Castle was featured as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the first two Harry Potter films and was used as a filming location for Downton Abbey.
A short history of the poison garden
The first Alnwith garden was started in 1750 by the then 1st Duke of Northumberland, who employed Capability Brown to landscape the parkland surrounding the castle. Through the centuries, the gardens eventually fell into disrepair, at least until 1995, when Jane Percy, the mother of four became a duchess.
Percy’s husband became the twelfth Duke of Northumberland following his brother’s untimely death. After inspecting the gardens, Percy noticed one section that was overgrown and neglected. She decided to restore the garden, but she wanted something different. After deciding on a medicinal herb garden, her vision took a sharp turn after a visit to the Medici family’s infamous poison garden in Padua, Italy.
There she was introduced to the dark side of gardening, discovering there were plants that could kill, rather than heal. “What’s really interesting is to know how a plant kills you, and how the patient dies, and what you feel like before you die,” the duchess told the Smithsonian. “Most plants that kill are quite interesting.”
“I thought, This is a way to interest children,” she says. “Children don’t care that aspirin comes from a bark of a tree. What’s really interesting is to know how a plant kills you, and how the patient dies, and what you feel like before you die.” Now, isn’t that a bit macabre?
After setting up her garden of horrors, it was opened for visitors in February 2005. Today, over 800,000 visitors walk through the garden, getting up close, but not too close, and personal with the many killer plants that grow in our midst. And the garden is now part of a structured drugs awareness program that is used to teach teenagers about the dangers of drugs, according to Sky News.
The deadly flora of the poison garden
The warning about not touching or smelling the plants is real because they really are deadly, no joke. Among the plants, a visitor can find foxglove, atropa belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, and hemlock, the plant that killed the philosopher Socrates.
You can also find ricinus communis, commonly used in Castor oil, which can destroy internal organs with a single seed, and nux vomica, the source of strychnine. Even the daffodils that bloom in the garden in the spring time are dangerous, or at least the bulbs are. The beautiful Laburnum tree that is covered in bright yellow flowers when in full bloom is deadly.
The seemingly innocuous laurel hedge is lush, but of course, deadly. The duchess said that some people actually pluck one or two of the leaves, taking them home as keepsakes. But while driving home they sometimes fall asleep behind the wheel, having succumbed to the toxic fumes from the leaves.
“People think we’re being overly dramatic when we talk about (not smelling the plants), but I’ve seen the health and safety reports,” the duchess told reporters. In talking about Jimson weed, she added that “Datura is an incredible poison, but an amazing aphrodisiac, too, and you see it everywhere.”
Visitors who tour the garden are accompanied by guides who regale you with descriptions of the plants, as well as deliciously frightening stories of how the plants are used to kill people. You even learn how the unlucky recipient of the poison feels as he or she is dying.
A word about the narcotics plants grown at the poison garden. The duchess has a license to grow marijuana, cocaine and magic mushrooms. She also grows tobacco plants along with her opium poppies. But this part of the garden is strictly for educational purposes.
