Alnwick Gardens

When Jane Percy’s brother-in-law, the 11th Duke of Northumberland, passed away suddenly in 1995, she and her husband inherited Alnwick Castle- and its deteriorating gardens. The Duchess was unhappy in her new role until her husband suggested that she should renovate the Alnwick Garden. She decided the grounds needed something different from typical English rose beds. Inspired by the infamous Medici poison garden in Italy, where Renaissance nobles cultivated deadly plants to dispatch their enemies, she created her own locked garden behind black iron gates marked with skull and crossbones. The Poison Garden opened in February 2005.

Today, gardeners don gloves, face shields, and hazmat suits to tend hemlock, belladonna, and legally-grown cannabis, while tour guides cheerfully explain how Victorians kept datura flowers on their tables and tapped the pollen into their teacups to enjoy the psychotropic effects. Despite warnings not to smell the plants, 20 to 30 people still pass out in the garden each year. A reluctant duchess found her calling cultivating the very things that could kill you.