This is not a garden; but a visitor attraction, not that there is anything fundamentally wrong with visitor attractions per se. A garden though is created as a personal folly in purely personal search for pleasure through the manipulation of nature, l can’t help but feel the motivation for Alnwick Garden was of a far more financial nature. That aside; the garden doesn’t work as a garden.  The centre piece is the large and very elaborate waterfeature which is far too big for the site and is only missing the Disney Princess Castle at the top. Any large cascading water feature is going be compared to the Chatsworth cascade but if that was the inspiration behind this one the creator clearly didn’t understand how the one at Chatsworth worked. Any garden water feature has to be in scale with its surroundings and add to them not try to visually swap them. Why it was seen fit to chlorinate the water I don’t know but the smell of chlorine assails you before you reach the water. Such a move prevents any aquatic life, plant or animal, surviving in the water feature which says a lot about the attitudes of the people behind it.

The other dominant feature is the “poison garden” and much is make of the dangers this garden contains. The whole thing it treated with great drama even though most of the plants are common and normal practices, like washing your hands before eating and not eating any plants you are not sure of, have protected us all from for years. Somewhere behind the showmanship there are one or more valid messages but they are drowned out by the ringmaster!

There is no doubt that Alnwick Gardens are controversial, you only have to mention it to an UK nurseryman to see their blood pressure rise, the important question is; has it done anything to assist the development of gardens and the plants grown in them? Personally I can’t see it, which is a shame as the site has plenty of potential and a lot of money was spent on it.