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- 29th Oct 2026
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The Alnwick Garden turns 25: the Duchess of Northumberland on what’s coming next
Alnwick Garden turned 25 this month, and it’s hard to picture now that this corner of Northumberland was once a derelict walled garden full of fir trees and fallen stone.
Jane Percy, Duchess of Northumberland, set out to revive it in 1997, bringing in Belgian landscape architects Jacques and Peter Wirtz, and the first phase opened to the public in October 2001.
A quarter of a century on, you’ll find the Grand Cascade, a Poison Garden people talk about up and down the country, a treehouse restaurant up in the canopy and Lilidorei, the hobgoblin-haunted play village billed as the world’s largest play structure, which opened in 2023. Behind it all sits a charity running programmes for young people and older people across the region.
We caught up with the Duchess to talk cherry blossom snowstorms, why you should never accept a curry from someone you don’t trust and what’s coming next.
IT ALL STARTED WITH A DOG WALK
What did you see in the derelict walled garden at the very start?
“I knew the old garden well in its derelict state. We used to walk our dogs through rows of fir trees, being careful not to trip over old stones from the collapsed buildings.
One day, when standing at the bottom of the garden looking up the hill towards the stone arches at the top of the garden, I suddenly realised that, under some overgrown rhododendron bushes, there might be shaped banks of earth.
I brought in a digger and stripped away the rhododendrons, and suddenly we could see that there were two banks whose shapes mirrored each other and which framed the hillside. They provided the strong ‘bones’ of the garden and the final design, which you see today, relied heavily upon these banks of earth.”
A SOAKING, A SHRIEK AND A BLOSSOM SNOWSTORM
What’s the moment from the last 25 years you’ll always remember?
“I honestly can’t think of a single moment when I’ve felt ‘proud’ of anything I’ve done, but there were two incidents which I witnessed and where I said to myself, ‘Jane, stop, this is a good moment, and this is why it was worth doing’.”
The first came while she was people-watching outside the Pavilion with a cup of tea. A father pushed his son in a wheelchair up the curved steps of the Grand Cascade and straight through its overhead jets, the pair of them soaked and shrieking with laughter.
“When thinking about it afterwards, I realised that often a child in a wheelchair can only ever watch able-bodied children play and they must be wishing they could do the same.”
The second came after a Cherry Blossom Dedication Ceremony, where families remember loved ones with trees and swinging seats in the orchard. Years earlier, she’d turned down Jacques Wirtz’s idea of planting several cherry varieties to stretch out the flowering season.
“My view was that I wanted visitors to be blown away by the sheer numbers of one cherry tree and that when the wind blew the blossom from the trees it might resemble a snowstorm. 10 years later I climbed into my car to drive home after a wonderful ceremony, and I couldn’t see through my windscreen. Blossom covered the glass and looked like heavy snow, which I had to remove with my windscreen wipers.”
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THE GRUESOME STORIES BEHIND THE POISON GARDEN
Where did the idea for the Poison Garden come from?
“The Poison Garden first rooted in my mind after I visited a derelict garden in Padua near Venice. There was a skull and crossbones on the gate, and I was told that the Medici family had built it to find more effective ways to remove their enemies.”
Then came Soutra Aisle near Edinburgh, the site of a medieval monastery hospital. Excavations in the 1980s uncovered amputated limbs alongside sponges holding henbane, hemlock and opium poppy seeds, measured to put a patient under for two to three days while the limb came off.
“How a plant kills is fascinating. My advice to anyone having dinner with someone they’re not sure about would be to avoid eating curry if it’s offered.”
THE TREEHOUSE WASN’T MEANT TO BE A RESTAURANT
What was the thinking behind dining up in the trees?
“The Treehouse was never meant to be a restaurant. It was built as an educational facility, and I thought how much more fun it would be to have lessons in a treehouse than in a classroom. However, the demand for a restaurant and subsequent weddings couldn’t be ignored, and the Treehouse is so popular that we’re planning to double its size in the final phase of the garden.”
WORK EXPERIENCE, CUPS OF TEA AND NEW FRIENDS
Which of the charity’s projects are closest to your heart?
“Teenagers in the North East have few opportunities to gain valuable work experience, and I’m always happy when I’ve heard that a youngster has been employed on the back of their work experience in The Alnwick Garden.”
For older people, there’s the Elderberries programme and the free, volunteer-run Drop-In Centre, sponsored by her friend Maureen Halbert.
“Many older people in rural areas don’t see their children or their grandchildren because they’ve moved south for work. It’s a happy place, full of laughter and chat with lots going on.”
PHONES AWAY, IMAGINATIONS ON IN LILIDOREI
What do you hope children take away from a day in Lilidorei?
“Lilidorei was designed specifically to encourage children to keep their mobile phones in their pockets and to use their imaginations. My general rule of thumb is not to do what has been done before.
Everyone is terrified of Crabbit the Hobgoblin, and they’re mystified by the sounds of the breathing mushrooms. Why do they breathe? Why are there bite marks on the mushrooms? That’s the point of Lilidorei. There are lots of questions, and there’s no right answer.”
WHAT’S COMING NEXT FOR ALNWICK GARDEN?
What are you most excited about for the garden’s next chapter?
The big job now is finishing what she started. The garden’s final phase will double the size of the Treehouse and make the Grand Cascade easier to get around.
“We’re now working on the completion of The Alnwick Garden, its final phase, and looking at how it might be funded. Lots more is happening over the coming months and our Christmas Light Show and Christmas in Lilidorei is already selling out.”
Want to see where it all started? The Winter Light Trail and Christmas in Lilidorei are on sale now, and with tickets already flying, you won’t want to leave it late.
Rachael Ellis
Head of Content
After gaining a first in her BA Media and Journalism degree at Northumbria University, Rachael worked at Newcastle’s leading regional newspaper with her stories being picked up in national and global newspapers. She spent two very successful years giving a voice to those communities across the North East who otherwise…
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