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The Poison Garden

A small, strictly guided tour through toxic and narcotic plants within the walled garden - genuinely fascinating and one of the best-value hours in Alnwick, though pre-booking is essential.

Address:

The Alnwick Garden, Greenwell Road, Alnwick, NE66 1FJ

Hours:

Daily: 10am - 5pm

Map

About

The Poison Garden is the small, deliberately sinister corner of The Alnwick Garden, kept behind locked black iron gates. Inside are around 100 toxic, intoxicating and narcotic plants — some kept in giant cages, others that you'd find growing quite innocently in back gardens and hedgerows across Britain.

You can only go in on a guided tour, which runs roughly 20 minutes. The guides mix gruesome science with folklore and some of history's most notorious poisonings, and the setting — ivy-covered tunnels and flame-shaped beds — adds to the drama. The golden rule is no smelling, touching or tasting anything; even so, the occasional visitor still feels faint on a warm day.

Good to know

You'll need an Alnwick Garden day ticket, and the Garden currently asks visitors to pre-book a Poison Garden tour slot for a small extra charge. Tour groups are kept small, so popular times fill up — book your slot when you arrive or online. The rest of the Garden, including the Grand Cascade, the Bamboo Labyrinth and the treehouse, makes it easy to fill a day, and Alnwick Castle is right next door.

A Little Note From Heather & Sand

We haven't quite made it here ourselves yet, but it's on our list!

We're working our way around Northumberland, personally visiting and reviewing as many of the places featured in our Listed section as we can. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

In the meantime, we do our homework. Before adding somewhere to Heather & Sand, we research it, look at what other visitors have to say and check that it has a good reputation. If the feedback isn't encouraging, it generally doesn't make our list.

Of course, a little online research is no substitute for muddy boots, a decent coffee and seeing somewhere for ourselves. So until we've visited, we'll leave the personal review to one side.

A little about us...

Heather & Sand is our little corner of Northumberland — a collection of places, stories, walks and discoveries from a county we love.

Through our Journal, Guide and Listed pages, we hope to help you discover somewhere new, revisit an old favourite or simply enjoy a little Northumberland from wherever you happen to be.

Tom, Lucy & the Heather & Sand crew.

Featured in our guides