A week in Northumberland #5: Last chance to see

On our way home, we stopped off to look at a big ol' wall in a farmer's field (the kind of thing you do in these parts). We found a nice big chunk, and once we'd looked at it and jumped up and down on top of it and stuff - not exactly what the Romans had in mind but there we are - we spotted a sign to Chesters Walled Garden.

This was something of a coincidence as I'd just been reading an article on herb gardens by one Susie White, who, the magazine mentioned, ran a herb garden called... Chesters.

We had to pop inside. Or rather, I had to, with small children and resigned hubby in tow. They soon changed their tune: we were all instantly transfixed by loveliness. I have never seen so many flowers packed into such a small space. It was a riot, a symphony, a heavenly chorus of colour: who says you can't make a garden look good in late summer? Just feast your eyes on this lot.

Of course, pictures don't tell the whole story: here, the air you breathe is saturated with perfume, and your ears are buzzing with drunken bees - I have never, never seen so many bumblebees in one garden before. The tranquillity of the place settles over you like a favourite quilt, and you can lose yourself in just wandering and looking.

Now for the sting in the tail: this garden will no longer exist after this year.

It turns out Susie is only leasing the land, and the landlords have pulled the plug. It may have been built in the 18th century, and the current garden has taken over 20 years to create: but it has just a few months left, and has to close by next May. Susie is now looking for another garden in the area to house her national collection of thyme and the many thousands of plants to which she has devoted the last couple of decades. To find out what happens next, you can visit her blog or the garden's website: such a gardener will undoubtedly make another paradise every bit as beautiful, but my heart goes out to her and I wish her the very, very best of luck.

A week in Northumberland #4: A wee wonder

Let me take you along a rain-slick path into a hidden garden of dripping ferns, towering leaves and vividly coloured blooms. It's raining, of course (we are in Northumberland, after all) but the garden is glistening and jungle-like: proof, if proof were needed, that a misty drizzle is every bit as romantic as sunshine. This was my discovery of the week.

Bide-a-Wee Cottage and its delightful nursery, near Morpeth in Northumberland, is open from May to August, on Wednesdays and Saturday afternoons only. I'm told that June, when the Himalayan lilies are in flower, is the best month to go. If you can't get there - they have a pretty fabby online mail order service, too.

A week in Northumberland #3: Poisonous plants

Perhaps the most talked-about bit of an already very talked-about garden is Alnwick Garden's Poison Garden. You're only allowed inside the locked gates with a guide, no doubt mainly because of those pesky health and safety types but in fact a handy way of emphasising just how dangerous these plants can be.

Here you'll find plants in cages. A cannabis plant grown with a special Defra license and a (admittedly a little weedy-looking and therefore not very scary) Datura or two are among the prison population.

There are also a lot of very familiar plants, and as someone who likes to think they know their plants well enough to be pretty sure which ones to avoid, it was distinctly unsettling to learn that ivy, box, and laurel are among the harmful plants with a place in this garden.

So - if you spot any of this motley crew lurking in your beds and borders, or indeed in the hedgerows and fields: be afraid... be very afraid...

Hemlock is a member of the parsley family and looks alarmingly similar to cow parsley in the wild - but it smells like mice and has bright pink stems

Hemlock (Conium maculatum): Probably the most famous poisonous plant of them all, and still found commonly in the countryside. When Socrates used it to commit suicide I don't suppose anyone mentioned to him that it paralyses you from the feet upwards. So you're entirely conscious while it numbs first your legs, then your torso, and finally stops your lungs from working so you suffocate. Meanwhile the brain is entirely unaffected, and remains lucid throughout. Mmm. Nice.

Ivy (Hedera spp): Ever noticed when you're pruning a big mass of ivy that you start coughing? That's not just because it's dusty under there because it's the first time you've clipped it back for centuries. You're breathing in saponins, which in quantity can lead to laboured breathing, convulsions and eventually coma. So next time, wear a face mask.

Box (Buxus sempervirens): If you're clipping box hedges, don't wander off and have a cup of tea before you pick up all the little bits that have dropped on the ground. As they dry, they release buxine, and if you touch it, it'll give you an irritating skin rash.

Even boring old laurel can bite

Daffodils (Narcissus spp): People eat daffodils thinking they're onions. No, really - it's true. Unfortunately the law of natural selection doesn't apply here: though eating as little as half a bulb gives a nasty stomach complaint, it won't rid the world of someone with a criminal lack of common sense.

Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus): Now this one came as a complete surprise. If you stack all your prunings in a big bag and stuff them in the back of the car, then think, "oh sod it, I can't be bothered to go to the tip today" you will pay for your laziness with a car full of cyanide fumes in the morning. Apparently entomologists kill bugs by putting them in a jar with crushed laurel leaves. Much the same principle, really.

Autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale): Crikey, you don't want to be mistaking this one for onions. In fact most people don't: they mistake it for wild garlic, which it greatly resembles (a lot more than daffodils resemble onions, I suspect). Symptoms sound like something out of a particularly gruesome episode of Casualty: convulsions, cardiovascular collapse and multiple organ failure. Apparently it's a lot like dying of cholera.

Rue is deadly - though the bees don't seem to mind

Rue (Ruta graveolens): Ever heard of the phrase, "Rue the day"? As in, "I rue the day I ever planted this damn thing in my herb garden?" Well though this is a very pretty plant, and found in lots of people's herb gardens, it's really quite a vicious little thing. Brushing against it, especially on a sunny day, can blister skin to the point of burns: what's really extraordinary though is that rue is often recommended (and grown in people's herb gardens) for rubbing onto the skin as a mosquito repellent. Please don't do this: mosquito bites will seem as the kiss of angels in comparison. Eating it causes acute gastroenteritis and eventually liver failure, though fortunately it tastes disgusting.

I've left out the obvious poisonous plants we all (hopefully) know about: the monkshoods, cuckoo pints and nettles which all gardeners should handle with care. But there are a whole lot more - aquilegias, cimicifuga, periwinkles, snowdrops and daphnes to name but a few - which I could have included and which you should know about.

I'm indebted to John Robertson, a former guide at Alnwick's Poison Garden, for supplementing my patchy recollections with extra information: and if you want to know about the bits I've left out, I can only direct you to his exceptionally good website where all these plants and more are described in gruesome detail.

A week in Northumberland #2: Alnwick Gardens

The most celebrated gardens in Northumberland are without doubt those of Alnwick Castle. As it happens, they're also among the newest: a slightly hyperactive television series a few years ago brought their creation to public attention and they've been a big talking point ever since.

Designed by the Belgian landscapers Jacques and Peter Wirtz, and enabled by the dynamic, lively and therefore not-very-Duchess-like Duchess of Northumberland, they are among the most exciting gardens in the country. I loved the mix of the historic and the very modern, the celebration of plants, and above all how much sheer laugh-out-loud fun it all was.


At the heart of the garden is water. This is the only garden I've come across which takes such great delight in reviving the 500-year-old Italian Renaissance sport of Giochi d'Acqua - garden water games. The massive central cascade that dominates the garden is highly dramatic at the best of times - but when it plays, on the hour and on the half-hour, it's enough to make you gape in wonder.


The garden luxuriates in water: it's just everywhere. I loved these funky swirly rills...


...and the way this fountain pours down the steps from the European Garden at the top.


Best of all there are no 'keep off' signs here: the kids are positively encouraged to get wet (you're advised to take a spare set of clothing for them in the brochure) and my girls couldn't believe their luck.

Now in case you're wondering where all the plants are...


The Ornamental Garden at the top of the cascade is on just as grand a scale as the rest of the garden. It's the sort of place where (at the risk of sounding like an M&S advert) you don't just have a pergola: you have a hand-built, 20-foot-high pergola swagged with roses around a bubbling pool. You don't just have a seating area: you have a staggeringly high dome of elegantly-wrought iron clothed in rambling roses and Clematis montana and get a crick in your neck looking at it. Well... you get the general picture.

The formal structure here is just marvellous, and also breathtaking in its scale. Parterre after parterre clicks into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, defined by crisp box and secluded by pleached crabapples. Like the water cascades, it's a modern design celebrating ancient traditions.

The middle parterres were filled with a froth of roses - this one's 'Just Joey', and the scent was heavenly.

The surrounding beds, along the mellow old brick walls, were where the plantsperson's delights were. Now, at the risk of sounding like I'm carping, it wasn't the most inspiring planting I've ever seen: but in their defence, I think I probably caught the borders in their mid-summer slump, and I suspect they would have looked less weary earlier, or indeed later in the year.

Which is not to say there weren't some choice finds in there.

Don't you just love this blue? The bluest blue salvia I've ever seen, labelled as S. patens 'Blue Angel'.

Bees were everywhere: here squeezing the last few drops of nectar from Anthemis tinctoria 'Susan Mitchell'. I liked the way they left the heads on instead of dead-heading (my usual knee-jerk reaction to anthemis at the end of its season): they looked like palest yellow pincushions dancing in the breeze.

And last but not least, I discovered this extraordinary hydrangea. It's H. sargentiana, with giant leaves the sultry rough green of old velvet and flowers the slate-purple of a thundery afternoon. Big and moody: I loved it.

For more about the garden, and the many new projects the Duchess has planned for the coming years (including a skating lake - worth a return visit for that alone) there's a website to visit; or you can come back here tomorrow for part two.

A week in Northumberland #1

Come with me, gentle reader, to a little corner of England I bet most of you have only ever gazed at wearily from the window of a car (or train) while hoping it's not too long till Edinburgh (it's not).

Northumberland may be one of the largest counties in England, but it's also one of the emptiest, partly because everyone is too impatient to get to next-door Scotland to stop there, and partly because the few people who do live there keep it close to their stout and farmerly chests.

It's also one of the most beautiful, and even (I'm bracing myself for getting lynched in short order by sundry broad-vowelled people as I write this) outdoes Yorkshire for the sheer volume, to say nothing of idyllic beauty, of its countryside. Best of all, it has some of the most inspirational gardens in England.

Just to whet your appetite - here's a taste of what you can expect to find there:

PS the sharp-eyed among you may notice that Holy Island is conspicuous by its absence. That's because I couldn't see it beneath the three thousand other people crammed on there along with me. Come to think of it, maybe that's where all the people in Northumberland had got to. Anyway, for a place that's meant to be a haven of spiritual reflection and romantic mysticism, it had a very unholy number of chip vans and push buggies. It's enough to make you start writing letters to the National Trust and English Heritage, both of whom should know better. Harrumph.