The Alnwick Garden, Alnwick

Alnwick Garden has been highly recommended to me on many occasions, and when we visited Northumberland recently, it was definitely on our list of attractions to visit. Located between the market town of Alnwick and the grounds of Alnwick Castle is the most amazing, creative and inventive garden, designed by the Duchess of Northumberland. Although the first couple of phases are now complete, this is a garden still in the making - and the ideas for the future will make sure that I return again to see the absolutely magical things that are planned come into fruition.

~~History~~
The gardens were always a cherished part of the castle, beloved and developed by a succession of Dukes. The original gardens were created by the leading designers of their day. Capability Brown landscaped the parkland in 1750, and visitors can still experience views across Capability Brown landscape from the Treehouse in the garden. The 3rd Duke was a plant collector, and brought seeds from over the world, attracting an international reputation. In the middle of the 19th century, the 4th Duke created an Italianate garden, featuring the Venetian wrought iron gates that have been restored to their original position at the entrance to the Ornamental Garden. By the end of the century, the Duke's 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 after, the austerity of the 20th century saw the garden fall into disrepair. It was closed as a working garden in 1950.

Jane Percy, the current and 12th Duchess of Northumberland, is a keen gardener - and she had the vision to turn the run down collection of broken brickwork and brambles into something beautiful. She is completely responsible for the restoration and development of the garden.

~~Controversy~~
The scheme was not without its opponents. English Heritage has accused the Duchess of destroying one of the greatest gardens in the country, although she insists that a full archaeological survey was carried out by 30 scientists from Durham University, at a cost of £150,000. The legal confrontation that ensued cost the Duchess £500,00 before she gained permission to build the garden.

Although the Duchess claims that her main objective was to bring jobs and prestige to the North, the £42 million cost of the garden has attracted a fair amount of criticism, particularly as the Duchess is seeking £16 million of public funds for the next stage of development.

The third element of criticism is design. Although the Duchess believes that this mainly comes from "bitchy" and "snobby" gardeners in the south, many reviews criticise the fact that there is little of the North in her garden. The inspiration seems to come from the gardens of Europe, and the main designers are from Belgium. Items such as the surfacing, which is a side-laid clay paver usually only used in Belgium, incense some British designers, who feel that a nod to Northumbrian or British materials should have been made.

~~Design~~
The Alnwick Garden was created by Jacques and Peter Wirtz, who are celebrated international garden designers from Belgium. The Wirtz signature style centres on architectural green structures, as seen in the hornbeam-covered pergolas, yew topiary, box and beech hedges. The various sections of the garden are all unique; one area leading into the next, but each with their own individual character.

~~The Grand Cascade~~
The Grand Cascade has to be mentioned first when describing the garden, as it is the first thing to hit you as you walk through the gates. This centrepiece of the garden is built into the slope of the hill, into two listed earth banks from the 1850s. The water cascades over the 21 stone ledges, down the hill at 7260 gallons a minute. In addition, water jets create a constantly moving decoration, attracting the eye with unpredictable patterns of water, both large and small, high and low. When the sun glints off this huge, tumbling mass of water, it is really beautiful.

At each side, the Grand Cascade is surrounded paths that climb the hill, leading through hornbeam pergolas which echo the stone curves. Channels of water leading from the Ornamental Garden wind down the hill, in and out of the pergolas.

~~The Ornamental Garden~~
The Ornamental Garden is one of my favourite sections of the garden. It is accessed through the huge and ornate original Venetian gates, and is a very formal garden, laid out in the Spanish style of squares and fountains. The use of water, running through long channels in the ground into fountains reminds me a lot of the Alhambra. These water channels run right out of the gates and down the slope to the entrance of the gardens, meeting in pools along the way and winding in and out of trees.

There are charming little corners of this garden - pathways are bordered by lavender and fruit trees, and two dovecotes sit on the mellow old stone walls of the garden in a quiet corner. At the Ornamental Garden's centre lies a bubbling pool that spills into the rills that run throughout the Garden. There are also two small secret gardens, hidden behind hedges - that you can discover by following the water to the fountains enclosed inside.

~~The Water Sculpture Garden~~
This garden has the feel of a maze. It contains a winding holly hedge, which both leads to and disguises a selection of water fountains and sculptures, created by William Pye, a water artist who brings together both art and science in his work. The sculptures are made from stainless steel, and feature thin layers of water running down beautiful shapes in various ways. The main attraction here is Torricelli, and interactive water sculpture which works on the principle of hydrostatic pressure - allowing the tension to mount as the pressure rises, and then suddenly erupting in a flurry of jets and movement as the correct pressure is reached.

~~The Poison Garden~~
The big, black locked gates, with their skull and crossbones symbols, create a great deal of anticipation and excitement when they are finally opened and visitors can enter. The Poison Garden can only be entered at set times, with a marshal controlling the situation and providing an educational talk as she shepherds the visitors around the garden. Alnwick Garden has a Home Office licence to grow cannabis and coca - and these plants are rather strangely kept in their own cages in the garden. The talk was very informative, as the marshal led us past poisonous plants that grow naturally in Britain and regaled us with gruesome tales of death and sickness.

This part of the garden really caught the imagination of the teenagers in my party, despite the lack of some of the actual plants. The Marshal frequently had to hold up a colour photo of the plant because of the lateness of the year - saying "earlier in the year you would have seen the mandrake growing, but sadly it has already died back". If you are interested in this part of the garden, make sure you visit before the end of September!

~~The Cherry Orchard~~
This is a fairly new part of the garden, and best seen in spring when the large, double flowered, white cherry blossom comes out. Hundreds of Tai Haku cherry trees are planted in homage to Japanese culture, providing a very good reason to visit the garden at this special time of year.

~~The Rose Garden~~
Again, a garden best viewed in the summer months, the Rose Garden is a lovely fragrant mix of roses, honeysuckle and clematis. There are more than three thousand David Austin Roses, including Just Joey, Jude the Obscure and Gertrude Jekyll.

~~The Tree House~~
Any lover of Enid Blyton's magic stories will be drawn to the amazing wooden treehouse. Straight from the pages of a fairy tale, this enormous structure is built from Canadian cedar, Scandinavian redwood and English and Scots pine and is reached through high wooden walkways and wobbly rope bridges.

As you look around, you are drawn to the cosiest room imaginable - a hexagonal wooden room with a pointy roof and a roaring log fire in the middle. As one person after another peers in, a very polite but very bored doorman says time after time, "Yes madam, it's a restaurant..." And it is a restaurant - but one for a very special occasion - rather exclusive and definitely not for a quick stopover with the kids!

~~The Woodland Walk~~
A mile of natural woodland with wonderful views starts at the Treehouse and is often home to sculpture exhibitions.

~~Fun for Smaller Children~~
This garden has everything for adults, and even something for disaffected teenagers, but like every quality family destination, it has lots for younger children to do too. The Bamboo maze is one of the twistiest, mystical mazes I have been in. The use of bamboo makes a dense, atmospheric screen, and it is not easy to find your way out! The Labyrinth was designed by Adrian Fisher, an international maze-maker.

Younger children love to play in the jets of the Cascade, pretending to be caught out and soaked by the sudden squirts of water. In addition, a selection of mini tractors were available for small children to roll down the slope at the bottom of the cascade, and to collect water from the water walls.

There are activities for children throughout the year - we visited at Halloween, when pumpkin carving was going very well.

~~Amazing Plans for the Future~~
The Duchess has even more plans to develop the garden. These include a pond, which will be frozen for 6 months of the year to create a skating venue surrounding an ice sculpture; a spiral garden, which includes a path winding through hornbeams to a high point, with marbles of water which will shoot into the air for children to catch; a garden for the senses, which will ask the visitor to pass through blindfolded to experience the smells and touches available; and a quiet garden, with a large shallow pool to rest hot feet in.

~~Practicalities~~
The café has rather average hot and cold food, served by lacklustre and depressed staff - but in a lovely location with big glass walls to see the gardens with. The food facilities do not compare at all well with somewhere like the Eden Project, and the eating area was run down and dirty when we visited.

Sadly I did not have to use the toilets, but I have heard that they are of exceptional quality and cleanliness, having won the Loo of the Year Award in 2006! I understand that the boys toilet provides led lights to assist better aiming....

The gardens and the tree house are all fully wheelchair and buggy accessible. There is a disabled toilet and baby changing. Milk warming is available on request.

Parking is in a massive car park on the other side of the road - it is a fair walk to get to the garden entrance, but you are allowed to park outside the gates in a special area if you are disabled.

~~Admission~~
Great emphasis is put on the Garden being a charity, and a £1 optional donation is added to the price of an adult ticket.

Child tickets are available for children 16 and under.
Concession tickets are available for over 60's and students with a student ID.
Adult Ticket £10.00; Concession Ticket £7.50; Child Ticket £0.01

Although I appreciate that my ticket is going to a charity, I was disappointed that reduced price tickets were not an option later in the day. When we first attempted to visit the garden, it was just after 3pm and the garden closes at 4pm. The ticket office insisted on charging us the full £20.02 (for 4 of us). They assured us that we could see everything in an hour. On this occasion we decided to return the next day at an earlier time, and this was the right decision. There is no way that you can see everything in the garden in an hour - the Poison Garden tour alone takes 20 minutes!

I advise anybody to allow at least 2 hours for a visit to the garden alone.
A more expensive ticket includes Alnwick Castle, and I would allow a whole day to see both attractions.