England 2026 - A Poison Garden

Here's another in the series of "Digger's Day Out" jaunts.  Alnwick Gardens.

These are adjacent to Alnwick Castle, which would also be worth your while.  Among other things it was used as a filming location for Downton Abbey.  Also Harry Potter.  They offer special Broomstick Class on the open square where young Potter first learned to fly a Quiddich broom.

In both cases the pronunciation is "Ann-ick".  Not to be confused with a spot near Hexham that is spelled Annick but pronounced differently.  You get used to this after a few visits to the area.

Now I'll say up front that neither the Castle nor the Garden are a cheap day out.  You have to go into this as we did, with the knowledge that your travel dollars (or whatever currency) are helping to maintain something wonderous and worthwhile.  OK, on to the Gardens....

The centerpiece is this grand array of fountains and waterfalls.  It's the sort of thing that you really can't capture with a photo.  But here it is from the bottom looking up:

And from the top looking down. The structure you see on the end is a nice restaurant/garden center complex.  Very dog friendly by the way, albeit with ongoing discussions between dogs and the small groups of ducks that waddle around begging for scraps.

Every now and then the fountains fire up and do interesting things.

The garden proper has all sorts of plants.  Early in the season not all are at their best, but enough were that the gardener types in our group were impressed.  Me, I was just as happy to wander through the hedge maze and find a naughty monkey sculpture...

We all have our particular interests I suppose.

There were some side trips adjacent to the Garden that we did not visit.  For a small extra fee you can visit an area called Lilidorei.  This seems to be a gigantic play area for kids with a sort of fantasy theme and what claims to be the world's biggest play structure.  

If I had grandkids in tow it would be a tempting option.  For the kids of course.....

But we spent a small additional amount of money for something else, the Poison Garden tour.

I won't give you the entire itinerary and talk, that would not be fair to the very clever staff they have doing this 20 minute or so stroll through a special section of the Garden.  But essentially they have collected a batch of famous poisonous plants in one place.  Famous of course as they have been used in assorted real and fictitious murders, all of which are described in slightly tidied up form.

Rather fun.  After the talk was done I did chat a bit with the guide, letting her know I was a former ER doctor (or A and E in their parlance).  I knew a bit about several of these plants, especially the ones that have/had medical uses.  Small amounts of foxglove, good.  Large amounts, skull n' crossbones territory...

Our authoress was not in the group that visited Alnwick.  But to be sure, we subsequently had another of our Plot Idea chats.  What if a series of poisonings happened, and after a while it became evident that someone had taken the Poison Garden tour and was going down the row using each poison for a different crime????

Meanwhile, in the general category of "name yer poison" our friend who is an aficionado of such things discovered that the gift shop sold a Poison Garden Gin!

I'm sure this will merit a place of pride in her "gin closet".  I have on occasion teased her that it is more like a "gin annex".  Or should I say, "gin Alnwicks"?