The warning on the gates, ‘These Plants May Kill’ should not be taken lightly by anyone, for with familiarity comes contempt, and from contempt – danger.

Come take a stroll with us through a deadly garden located in Northumberland, UK.    Behind the locked gates of the Poison Garden, guides and marshalls share tales of deadly plants. Myths and legends are uncovered, along with facts from science and history.   No touching, no sniffing and no cutting is allowed. 

The Poison Garden at Alnwick Gardens is on around the clock surveillance for the safety of the public and would be thieves.  Some of the plants are even kept in specially fenced areas to avoid accidental poisoning or theft of the plants for use in making narcotics.  In this garden, the plants are so dangerous and toxic that they may be kept in large cage like structures.   To highlight its hazardous nature the garden’s beds are laid in the shape of flickering flames.  

There are over 100 plants of varying deadliness grown in the Poison Garden.  Some of the plants are beautiful despite being deadly, and other look so harmless it is hard to imagine their dangerous, even fatal, qualities.    Also grown within the guarded confines of the Poison Garden are many other plants which are easily recognisable by even the most reluctant gardener, for many killers grow in your own back yard.

Foxgloves, Wolfsbane, Mandrake, Ricin, Belladonna, Poppies, Laburnam and varieties of Aquilegia thrive among the rarefied atmosphere of the Poison Garden.  Those who work here treat the plants with the utmost respect, wearing gloves when working with them.   The owner also has  a licence to grow marijuana, cocaine and magic mushrooms in the poison garden – for educational purposes.

A few of the plants you will find inside this poison garden….

 Foxglove (digitalis) may contain several deadly physiological and chemically related cardiac and steroidal glycosides.  Thus, the digitalis plants have earned several, more sinister, names: dead man’s bells and witch’s gloves.  The entire plant is toxic (including the roots and seeds). 

Foxgloves fatal accidents involve children drinking the water in a vase containing digitalis plants.   Drying does not reduce the toxicity of the plant.   The plant is toxic to animals, including all classes of livestock and poultry, as well as felines and canines.

Belladonna or Nightshade (Soleanaceae) has a long history of use as a medicine, cosmetic, and poison.  It was used as an anesthetic for surgery and embedded a poisonous sting with arrows made for battle.  The name “bella donna” is derived from Italian and means “beautiful woman” because the herb was used in eye-drops by women to dilate the pupils of the eyes to make them appear seductive. 

Nightshade is an incredible poison, but an amazing aphrodisiac, too, and you see it everywhere.  In Argentina, even nowadays, some people put a bell of datura like this one (pictured above) on a baby’s pillow at night, then take it away after five minutes and the baby has gone to sleep.  If it were left all night the baby would be dead in the morning.   Victorian ladies used to sit around a table with a nightshade plant in the middle and play cards or have tea.   They’d pop their cup under a bell, tap it, and pollen would fall into the cup.  They would experience similar effects to that of LSD.

Belladonna is one of the most deadly plants on the earth.  All parts of the plant are poisonous, but the sweet, pretty berries are especially alluring for children.   Although no eye surgery is performed today without the help from the nightshade family…The plant’s deadly symptoms are caused disruption of the nervous system, inhibiting its ability to regulate involuntary activities, such as sweating, breathing, and heart rate.

Lily of the Valley, popularily used in wedding bouquets is highly poisonous. Its toxicity is the plant’s defense against animals eating its seeds.  All parts of the plant—the stems, the leaves, the flowers and the berries—are extremely poisonous and close to 40 different cardiac glycosides have been found in the plant so far.

Ingest just a bit of Lily of the Valley if blurry vision, diarrhea, vomiting and nausea, disorientation, drowsiness, headaches, red skin rashes, excessive salivation, sudden alterations in your cardiac rhythm and possible death sound like your idea of fun.

Its Nux vomica’s Latin name implies much, but it perhaps rings more bells as strychnine. Interestingly, hemlock, a poison in its own right, can be used as an antidote to Strychnine, but don’t tell Socrates, who was sent to his death with a cup of hemlock.

Strychnine (pictured above) is not the most poisonous substance known to man (you need at least 50 mg to kill someone), but a you’d have to go a long way to find something that provokes a more violent death.

Strychnine poisoning can be fatal to humans and animals and can occur by inhalation, swallowing or absorption through eyes or mouth, as explained above. It produces some of the most dramatic and painful symptoms of any known toxic reaction. For this reason, strychnine poisoning is often used in literature and film. It is also used as a rat poison, but is not specific for unwanted pests and may kill other small animals.

Hemlock was used in ancient Greece to kill condemned prisoners, including Socrete’s, as mentioned above.  The plant also kills animals.   A dose of the poison results in an ascending muscular paralysis with eventual paralysis of the respiratory muscles which results in death due to lack of oxygen to the heart and brain…but it has also been used in medicine to treat arthritis, muscle spasms and works as a seditive.

Those of a certain age will be familiar with Castor Oil, which is made from the plant Ricinus communis (above), but a single seed from the same plant will kill an adult in the most horrible way. Ricin causes nausea, severe vomiting, convulsions and subsequent disintegration of the kidneys, liver and spleen…

The old expression ”It will either kill you or cure you” could not have been more apt!

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