With a royal legacy, an unconventional sensibility, and a spirit of generosity, the Duchess of Northumberland joined forces with Belgian landscape architect Jacques Wirtz to create a garden wonderland at her home of Alnwick Castle
Northumberland, on the North Sea in the blustery northeast of England, is not the first place one would think of as a garden destination. But one would need to think again. Alnwick Castle (pronounced ANN-ick) is the focus of one of the most revolutionary private/public gardens in the world. The leader of the revolution: a dynamo named Jane Percy, also known as the Duchess of Northumberland.
Though many estates and gardens in the United Kingdom draw paying visitors in order to preserve the past (a laudable mission), the duchess has raised and contributed funds, and continues to, in order to build something new, while retaining the best of the old.
This story began in 1996 when her husband, Ralph Percy, became the 12th Duke of Northumberland and the couple moved into Alnwick Castle. Filled with treasures that would make any of the great museums of Europe salivate and situated on 100,000 acres, the Percys’ new home proved just the catalyst for the duchess’s compassionate creativity.
A Scotswoman by birth, she was raised by a gardening mother, who opened their garden to visitors. “As a child, I would always find my mother in the garden, and I’d generally pick up a trowel and start helping.” This legacy of sharing one’s garden, combined with the inclination to pitch in and help, produced the perfect personality to restore and re-imagine the gardens at Alnwick and grant access to all. The duchess has a decidedly iconoclastic sensibility: “I always do everything differently,” she confesses. She did not want to extend the original style of the estate’s historic gardens, which include a park designed by the 18th century master, Lancelot “Capability” Brown, but rather desired to add “something more modern.”
After considering several designers, Her Grace chose Jacques Wirtz, a Belgian landscape architect. His redesigns of two Parisian landmarks, the Carrousel Garden in the Tuileries and the gardens of the Élysée Palace, have received lavish critical acclaim, and evidence a gift for adding a contemporary layer to well-established landscapes. Wirtz’s signature, a subtle sense of fantasy combined with a vast canon of classical tenets, serves, in the words of his artist’s statement “to preserve and enhance the spirit of the place” – just the right choice for the duchess’s dream.
Wirtz’s plan for the gardens, finished in 1997, included the icons of the present garden. Some of the more unexpected elements include: the Grand Cascade, a multi-level water feature inspired by the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas; the Bamboo Labyrinth, which the Duchess plans to light with fiber-optic wands that will dance in the wind, resulting in a fantastical evening experience; a Swiss Family Robinson-esque treehouse (tucked into 17 lime trees) that houses a restaurant and educational center; and the Poison Garden, a morality play–filled space where aspiring actors find work playing the role of heroin addicts who’ve partaken of the toxic poppies and other poisonous plants. Children love it.
Some of the more orthodox yet equally stunning aspects include the Ornamental Garden, containing one of the most extensive collections of European plants in England; the Serpent Garden with its undulating yew hedges; and the Rose Garden, containing 180 varieties.
Along with a gardening background, Her Grace has a compelling unction to promote a sense of community in the world. “People live such insular lives, what with computers and television. There’s just such loneliness and isolation. I want to bring people together —and what better place than in a garden! We’re building gardens, all kinds of gardens, for all of us.”Any temperate day you’ll find families lolling about on the lawn in front of the Grand Cascade, and the duchess considers that a hallmark of the success of her vision.
