Alnwick (an-ick) garden is awesome. I live close by and visit at least once a year. The poison garden is only a small part of Alnwick garden itself. It has the largest collection of Taihaku cherry blossom trees in the world, and when in bloom you can enjoy sitting on one of the many swing chairs and take in its beauty. There are a lot of fountains which put on a little show as well as water sculptures and a bamboo maize. I highly recommend visiting. The poison garden tours are pretty cool.
My parents always grew rhubarb in our yard and made pies from it. They were very careful to make sure all their kids knew that the leaves were poisonous. I still meet adults who aren't aware of this.
And? Why should anyone care what the twitter minority thinks? You’re just a bunch of losers that will never get an art job yet want others to spend money on your bad art when a robot can and will do a better job for cheap
@@topcatcoast2coast579ok and? Like I said all anti ai are just losers that think their art has value when it really dosent. Less than 5% of artists make a living off it, you and your 12th grade sketches ain’t getting a job in art with or without AI
They've got a few plaques on the walls and at points of the tour the guides (certainly the times I've been!) as the group to pick one then tells you more about that specific plant and what happened.
Took my husband there and as we left I did point out to him that I grew at least 5 of those plants: only a couple are really restricted and lots of garden and wild plants are toxic if processed the right way
I've been to this and it's worth a look around. Not having seen the video in full yet, the guide pointed to the tobacco plant as being one of the most deadly (primarily thanks to the way it's consumed).
It’s also pretty deadly when growing if you handle the leaves etc without proper ppe, I read an article years ago that spoke about how all the child slaves who were forced to work in the backend fields where always chronically ill and ultimately died prematurely due to it 💔
Nicotine is pretty toxic itself in relatively small amounts. Of course if dosed right it's a relatively harmless stimulant (increased BP being the only real issue) but it has a relatively low ld50 (not like fentanyl or botulism toxin but lowish). But calling the nicotine plant particularly toxic because of the harms of smoking is a bit weird. Most plants would be harmful if you lite them on fire and breathed chronically.
@@petergerdes1094 yeah I get that. I was referring to the slaves and in particular child slaves who were forced to harvest the plants way back when. They didn’t get protective clothing, gloves or days off in wet weather, this meant they all had chronic GTS (green tobacco sickness) which combined with the poor health and hygiene they also suffered meant they where always sick, malnourished and ultimately died at young ages, even for those times. So yes, even in plant form or before being burned, tobacco is toxic.
@@petergerdes1094 Particularly deadly doesn't just mean particularly toxic. Millions of people die every year because of the long term effects of tobacco consumption. It's a fair characterization.
@ But then you could say that gasoline and lithium are particularly deadly because without it we wouldn't have car accidents which kill even more. Besides it gets all fucked up when you consider just absolute numbers because that can make relatively harmless things qualify because most people avoid posions.
This place is on my bucket list and has been for years. Hopefully I will get there once my child is older. I can't imagine taking a small child in this garden it is hard enough keeping them alive under normal circumstances especially ones like my daughter who have no fear and haven't developed common sense yet.
The deadliest plants are kept in cages and there aren't many that will kill/maim through skin contact. A lot of them you'd have to dig up and eat to do yourself harm and they don't even taste good. Most accidental poisonings are from people misidentifying plants and making them into food.
I was about to mention that same thing…. Still, here in the USA north of Atlanta, the amount of shade I have in my front yard plus the soil and weather conditions, pretty much means nearly everything that will survive here - is poisonous!!
I recall a story told by the 'barefoot bushman' telling of the dangers of the 'gympie-gympie' tree & of the poor soul who thought it was a good idea to wipe his arse with one of the leaves....he apparently drew his own revolver & shot himself dead very soon after.
I've heard about this place and what plants are inside it, but had no idea about how it worked! Glad to hear how conteolled the environment is. If i were to ever visit England I'd love to go visit this garden.
This place is stunning! Not just the poison garden, we were there back in July. 100% recommended… they tell a great story at the garden on why the gimpy gimpy plant is also called the devil’s toilet paper 🤦🏻♀️
Fun fact: Here in Ontario Canada we have a plant called "Giant Hogsweed" which can cause third degree chemical burns with its sap gets hit with sunlight
The thing about plants in general is that MOST of them are toxic in one way or another. Even the plants we use as food can make us sick if we eat them at the wrong time (unripe persimmons or monstera fruit), or eat the wrong parts (potato, tomato, and eggplant leaves, or potato fruit, which are all related to nightshade). We see plants as passive and often forget that they, like animals, must fight for survival, and they will defend themselves in various ways to do this, whether by thorns, bad tastes, or poison. The key is to simply not touch or eat any plant one isn't familiar with (duh!).
A favorite Simon moment was from another channel, talking about a poisonous plant. He stopped part way through reading the script, laughing, "What kind of educated person would be like yeah I'll try some random fruit I found on the beach, why not?"
I’d wager many of those feinting did so from psychological factors. You get a similar thing with police that handle “suspected” fentanyl because they hear these dumb things like “if you breathe too hard near it you’ll die”
My family and I visited Alnwick castle a few years ago, great day out, would recommend. We also stayed in The Schooner Hotel, one of the most haunted hotels in England apparently, in nearby Alnmouth. Beautiful part of the world, will definitely be going back.
I was truly fascinated by this discussion. I am a natural products chemist and did an MSc in the detection of poison from plants in physiological fluid. I am now doing a PhD on South African medicinal plants. There are so many weird and wonderful ones here in SA and a few are in the collection in the poisonous plants garden at Onderstepoort Veterinary Science Campus (University of Pretoria). Some of my personal favorites are Boophane disticha and Acokanthera oppositifolia.
- Aconitum = Ack-own-eye- tum. Yeah you wear rubber gloves when handling this: you can get nausea, local numbness just touching any part of the plant. - Solanaceae family (Nightshades): 4-5 nightshade berries = LD50 for avg adult male. Atropine, and other Tropane alkaloids are in various other species in the family. (IE Jimweed, mandrake, etc).
If you want to get as close as you can to having dinner on the Titanic, The White Swan in Alnwick (pronounced Annick) has the RMS Olympic (Titanic’s sister) First Class lounge and parts of the grand staircase. This place on my bucket list!
Odd. I remember visiting a 'poison garden' when walking across England on the Hadrian's Wall path but it clearly can't be Alnwick since that is rather farther north. I get lost but even I don't get THAT lost. Doesn't anyone know what the other garden might have been? This would have been circa 2010.
sorry Simon, i don't want to be this guy, but since I went to high school there: it's "An-ick" not "Aln-wick", old english town names being what they are haha
Poison as a topic is also very interesting as it is far more intricate to use than just making a plant extract (for example). The pathway, a poisonous molecule takes in the body, is key in how effective a specific dose is.
Nice, we have a laburnum tree at the end of the drive. Had to chase a guy on horseback away once as the horse was about to eat some of the leaves & flowers.
Now I'm curious what difference, if any, there is between the rhododendrons in the poison garden and in the ones that are sold at pretty much every garden center...
None. You can get most of the plants grown in the poison garden from most garden centres or even supermarkets. I have my own poison garden. The majority of flowering bulbs are poisonous. Before I planted my garden I tried researching safe plants for dogs, intending to make a dog safe garden, but soon realised that all my favourite flowers are poisonous so I have a food garden in the front and a poison garden in the back.
It's funny because the first time I heard of Aconite was from the pilot episode of the show "Forever" where the main character is immortal and he calls death by Aconite a terrible way to go, as he keeps a record of his deaths and ranks them. I was interested in the plant/toxin so looked it up and apparently it's theorized that notable figures in history have been murdered/committed suicide via it's poison.
Thanks for that I was going to say that too. Plus Markov was not the only person to be attacked by a ricin umbrella a french Bulgarian dissident was attacked first. He was extremely lucky to survive!
Simon's pronunciation just made me cringe. I guess that being a southerner who lives in foreign parts and probably thinks that northern England is a wasteland, we shouldn't be too surprised. 😂❤❤❤😂
Yeah, made my teeth itch a tad. Alnwick is not far from where I live... we have many places with odd pronunciations here. Not as weird as when I lived in Nova Scotia though!
My mother plants various flower bushes at the border between our house's front yard and the roadside (we're not fenced off), and once in a while a herd of water buffaloes/cows that its owner let out to roam around our village come along and feasts on said flower bushes. Throughout the years, my mom figured out what flower bushes to plant that the cows/buffaloes absolutely won't go anywhere near, either because it was poisonous or it's just not delicious for the animals to eat. 😆
Way, way back when, say the mid to early 90s, and I'm a kid, 6 or 7, and my dad is a dairy farmer, so I live on a dairy farm, and dairy farmers up in New York grow corn, so attached to the parlor, or kind of behind it by the silos of feed, but just beyond that was CORN! Lots of the stuff, used to eat it raw, probably ate crop dust, anyway... The corn has huge spiders, Saint Andrew's spiders if you want to get a good look, and the boys of the farm's owner used to hang out with me, and we would go out in the corn fields, and they would put those big spiders in jars of chloroform? They called it that, but I was at most 6, so what would I know? They had lots of those spiders in jars, I don't know why they started doing it, but they did. Maybe collecting bugs and spiders and stuff like that is just rich kid stuff? Or, maybe it was due to lack of Pokemans for them to catch all of? I don't know why I remember that, it just stuck with me for decades. I'm sure those two are fine now, and grown up, but kids are weird.
My last visit to the Alnwick Garden Poison Garden was ruined by Michael Bay's aerial filming unit doing low helicopter passes of the castle for some Transformer movie.
It’s a wonderful place, for everything from its Harry Potter locations, its history, its stunning gardens, both poison and not, to its excellent tours.
A poison garden is also the plot of the James Bond novel "You Only Live Twice." A foreigner had bought a castle, and imported a variety of poisonous plants to go along with a pool of piranha and some volcanic fissures. It wasn't open to the public, but became a popular suicide spot. The movie had almost zero resemblance to the novel, except for the setting in Japan.
9:19 As a teen on a school camp in Wallaman Gorge. I brushed just against the edge, just the very edge, of the leaves. It instantly felt like someone had taken a red hot metal rod and held it against my leg constantly for several hours. It was still extremely painful weeks later and a hot or cold shower months later could make it flare up. It's no joke. The worst swear word in the Aboriginal language where this grows most frequently is 'gympie'. This is called the gympie gympie because it's so bad, saying the worst word once isn't enough. It's said, though probably apocryphal that the 'suicide bush' name came from a guy who, accidentally, or on a dare, versions differ, wiped his backside with a leaf and shot himself because of the pain.
Wisconsin here. We have all sorts of fun posion plants too! I try to stay aware as a hand full of nettles is no fun poison oak even more no fun. Surprised no mention of poison hemlock so common in many areas. Good to know the duchess has her eye on that really scary one though. Don't want the munchies infecting the general population. Terrifying.
This place was already oj my Harry Potter bucket list and I didn't even know about the poison garden until now. Definitely gotta check it out when I head back to England.
Here on the Island of Kauai in Hawaii, theres a place where a few of these plants( and other poisonous plants not mentioned here), grow wild. Kokee State Park has several dirt roads leading off to Cabins & hiking trails. On several of these roads I've seen( growing in the roadside Jungle) Hydrangea, Castor Bean Plants, Angel's Trumpet Plants, and Monkshood. In the 1920s & 30's many Europeans settled the island, some building vacation cabins in Kokee. They had an annual Garden club competition for the most beautiful Cabin yard/ or flower gardens. I believe this was when these many invasive & poisonous species were introduced.😳🏝⛰ btw these plants are growing wild because the area has a Mountain called Mt.Waialeale ( wettest place on earth), & probably the best soil/ tropical environment for many plants.🌿🍀🌴🌳🌲🪴🌱
Definitely on my list of places to visit should I ever be fortunate enough to take a trip to the UK. Wonder what they would have for accessibility since I'm blind and don't think I'd be taking my guide dog Along on this particular outing
I have memory issues and... I still remember touching a Gimpy Gimpy as a child. Oooh, and the fun part: The plant was growing in a School Garden, and yes... it was peer pressure to touch it!
i grew many red & green Castor plants 4 quick shade in front of windows. Had a G. Chain tree and used the hanging-yellow flowers in flower displays, had Foxgloves, plus had 3 gorgeous MonksHoods in a pot (never touched.) Rhodies grow wild in E & W USA and are common. (i never wore gloves, ate any part of them, nor composted w the leaves, so had no problem.) So, what good are Gympie trees?? (naked Brits seems an oxymoron : ))
I am not a British aristocrat just a weird-o that loves odd plants so I planted a poison garden. Don't worry it can only hurt me. I live in the middle of nowhere and my relatives know to destroy it when I die.
0:40 Note the citation in the top left for the picture when delivering the line "her love of nature with her fascination with death." Was that picture chose just so the source could be ironic?
I've been to Alnwick Castle many years ago, to visit the Hogwarts filming sites, and I had no idea about this garden, there were no signs anywhere that I can remember. According to Wiki it would've been recently opened. The property is huge though and I'm sure we missed some things, and perhaps the collection wouldn't have been as big as it is now.
There is a story told by your guides of a man who was out trekking in the Daintree and decided to grab the closest leaves available as loo paper; of course he grabbed the gympie-gympie leaves... Apparently some people have even committed suicide the pain is so bad and persistent
@@archstanton6102 The garden does (the poison garden is a small part of a larger garden for those who don't know) and they do have a range of merch with skulls and stuff on. I don't think they sell any of the dangerous plants in the garden centre bit though lol.
That quote hurt my head a little: Curing, Killing... it is via the same methods... bio-chemistry! Either way you look at it, it is a fascinating subject....
Alnwick (an-ick) garden is awesome. I live close by and visit at least once a year. The poison garden is only a small part of Alnwick garden itself. It has the largest collection of Taihaku cherry blossom trees in the world, and when in bloom you can enjoy sitting on one of the many swing chairs and take in its beauty. There are a lot of fountains which put on a little show as well as water sculptures and a bamboo maize. I highly recommend visiting. The poison garden tours are pretty cool.
The cherry blossom garden is hilarious. I'm sure it looks beautiful in photos but the cacophony of creaking swings kills the romance.
Thank you for that most wonderful insight
@@Draggonny I can’t agree.
Simon "welcome to allnick gardens". Azeem *clicks off video*.
The Duchess sounds like an absolute riot. Definitely my cup of tea. 😂
But watch what she puts in your cup of tea 😂
How much do you want to bet that her husband switched to drinking coffee after this?
She has no fucks left to give.
Bet she would be down for a shroom trip
@djdeem - I'll bet you're right, and wouldn't THAT be fun 😉
And we all respect the Miami Vice themed fashion choices.
My parents always grew rhubarb in our yard and made pies from it. They were very careful to make sure all their kids knew that the leaves were poisonous. I still meet adults who aren't aware of this.
I didn’t know this! TIL
My mom used to make a pie and other desserts. I didn't know the leaves were poisonous. I wonder if she did.
I didn't know this until I fed some to dads chooks when i was young, there was only one casualty.
Thank you for not using AI images in this video, genuinely. Some of us really hate it.
Simon is a robot with ai generated voice though...
I hate it. I still am tempted to get into the grift of AI tiktocs
And? Why should anyone care what the twitter minority thinks? You’re just a bunch of losers that will never get an art job yet want others to spend money on your bad art when a robot can and will do a better job for cheap
@@topcatcoast2coast579ok and? Like I said all anti ai are just losers that think their art has value when it really dosent. Less than 5% of artists make a living off it, you and your 12th grade sketches ain’t getting a job in art with or without AI
Don't let chat gpt hear you. Rokos basilisk
Love the casual glance at the plaque that says "Doctor Death, Harold Shipman",
They've got a few plaques on the walls and at points of the tour the guides (certainly the times I've been!) as the group to pick one then tells you more about that specific plant and what happened.
Took my husband there and as we left I did point out to him that I grew at least 5 of those plants: only a couple are really restricted and lots of garden and wild plants are toxic if processed the right way
lol "the right way" 🤣
Speaking of which, oleander...
@@lisagerman2111 Yep, those are nasty. Beautiful plant though. Just wash your hand after handling them (goes for almost all plants to be honest).
😂😂 *whispers in Bailey Sarian Aquatofana 😂
She is great. Much more interesting than most royals.
The Duchess of Northumberland sounds like a fascinating, hilarious weirdo ❤ 4:43
The correct term is an English eccentric😄
@@speleokeir so was steve irwin rip these people are kamikazes
I've been to this and it's worth a look around. Not having seen the video in full yet, the guide pointed to the tobacco plant as being one of the most deadly (primarily thanks to the way it's consumed).
It’s also pretty deadly when growing if you handle the leaves etc without proper ppe, I read an article years ago that spoke about how all the child slaves who were forced to work in the backend fields where always chronically ill and ultimately died prematurely due to it 💔
Nicotine is pretty toxic itself in relatively small amounts. Of course if dosed right it's a relatively harmless stimulant (increased BP being the only real issue) but it has a relatively low ld50 (not like fentanyl or botulism toxin but lowish).
But calling the nicotine plant particularly toxic because of the harms of smoking is a bit weird. Most plants would be harmful if you lite them on fire and breathed chronically.
@@petergerdes1094 yeah I get that. I was referring to the slaves and in particular child slaves who were forced to harvest the plants way back when. They didn’t get protective clothing, gloves or days off in wet weather, this meant they all had chronic GTS (green tobacco sickness) which combined with the poor health and hygiene they also suffered meant they where always sick, malnourished and ultimately died at young ages, even for those times. So yes, even in plant form or before being burned, tobacco is toxic.
@@petergerdes1094 Particularly deadly doesn't just mean particularly toxic. Millions of people die every year because of the long term effects of tobacco consumption. It's a fair characterization.
@ But then you could say that gasoline and lithium are particularly deadly because without it we wouldn't have car accidents which kill even more.
Besides it gets all fucked up when you consider just absolute numbers because that can make relatively harmless things qualify because most people avoid posions.
This place is on my bucket list and has been for years. Hopefully I will get there once my child is older. I can't imagine taking a small child in this garden it is hard enough keeping them alive under normal circumstances especially ones like my daughter who have no fear and haven't developed common sense yet.
Was just thinking I’d love to take my 5 year old but I’ll have to wait until he wouldn’t be trying to poison himself every couple minutes 😅
The rest of Alnwick garden is perfect for kids! There’s lots more to it. They have child focused activities.
The deadliest plants are kept in cages and there aren't many that will kill/maim through skin contact. A lot of them you'd have to dig up and eat to do yourself harm and they don't even taste good. Most accidental poisonings are from people misidentifying plants and making them into food.
I have to admit that I have never had much desire to visit England but now walking naked around the poison garden is on my must do vacation list.
I remember visiting the poison garden at Blarney Castle. IIRC, the only plant that was caged to stop people touching it was the Marijuana.
I was about to mention that same thing…. Still, here in the USA north of Atlanta, the amount of shade I have in my front yard plus the soil and weather conditions, pretty much means nearly everything that will survive here - is poisonous!!
I loved that garden, so cool! And yeah, only cannabis was caged and also no tour guides - we just wandered around on our own.
I definitely remember more than that being caged when I went there.
lol the only caged plant was the only one that isn’t poisonous
This blows my mind as so many people grow their own plants around me (legally, but no more than 4 plants)
They keep that Aussie NukeNettle under glass with a guard present at all times lol.
😂😂
I recall a story told by the 'barefoot bushman' telling of the dangers of the 'gympie-gympie' tree & of the poor soul who thought it was a good idea to wipe his arse with one of the leaves....he apparently drew his own revolver & shot himself dead very soon after.
I’ve heard that same story.
Same 😂
And i thought getting stung by nettles was bad enough! 😅
I will note this presentation whenever I walk through thick vegetation!
As a Floridian that grows castor bean and rosary pea for fun, I'm much more scared of poison ivy! Prob because I've gotten it five times this year!
I've heard about this place and what plants are inside it, but had no idea about how it worked! Glad to hear how conteolled the environment is. If i were to ever visit England I'd love to go visit this garden.
Alnwick castle was also used for Harry Potter (I think only the first two?) and, more importantly, the first Blackadder
Yep, and lots of other movies and TV shows.
I have a poison plant garden too! (Not nearly this poisonous.) Now that I know about this one, I really want to go visit it!
I loved visiting this garden in the late 90s! It's amazing how many of the plants are actually found in Kansas gardens.
12:43 The Madagascar Periwinkle looks a hell of a lot like the Yesterday Today and Tomorrow plant my mother has in the garden here in Australia.
Oooooo!!!!! Have read of this, & spent hours on their site, reading about the plants. Nice to actually see it. :)
Fun fact; rhododendrens are what makes that way Himalayan honey so trippy
That available online now and legally gonna get some for Christmas give it my family 😂
sounds kinda cool. that "come pet the lions" kinda energy.
Definitely on my bucket list to visit.
I remember when Tom Scott visited this place
I miss his vids
This place is stunning! Not just the poison garden, we were there back in July. 100% recommended… they tell a great story at the garden on why the gimpy gimpy plant is also called the devil’s toilet paper 🤦🏻♀️
Belladonna grows wild all over Vancouver, Canada.
Paclitaxel is used as a treatment for a number of cancers, not only breast cancers
Fun fact: Here in Ontario Canada we have a plant called "Giant Hogsweed" which can cause third degree chemical burns with its sap gets hit with sunlight
Its origin is from Eurasia, but we have it in Europe and even the U.K., where it was introduced as an ornamental plant by some bright spark!
The thing about plants in general is that MOST of them are toxic in one way or another. Even the plants we use as food can make us sick if we eat them at the wrong time (unripe persimmons or monstera fruit), or eat the wrong parts (potato, tomato, and eggplant leaves, or potato fruit, which are all related to nightshade). We see plants as passive and often forget that they, like animals, must fight for survival, and they will defend themselves in various ways to do this, whether by thorns, bad tastes, or poison. The key is to simply not touch or eat any plant one isn't familiar with (duh!).
I've been terrified of Ricin since the finale of Monk.
A favorite Simon moment was from another channel, talking about a poisonous plant. He stopped part way through reading the script, laughing, "What kind of educated person would be like yeah I'll try some random fruit I found on the beach, why not?"
Education and intelligence are two vastly different things, to be fair.
I’d wager many of those feinting did so from psychological factors. You get a similar thing with police that handle “suspected” fentanyl because they hear these dumb things like “if you breathe too hard near it you’ll die”
My family and I visited Alnwick castle a few years ago, great day out, would recommend. We also stayed in The Schooner Hotel, one of the most haunted hotels in England apparently, in nearby Alnmouth. Beautiful part of the world, will definitely be going back.
I was truly fascinated by this discussion. I am a natural products chemist and did an MSc in the detection of poison from plants in physiological fluid. I am now doing a PhD on South African medicinal plants. There are so many weird and wonderful ones here in SA and a few are in the collection in the poisonous plants garden at Onderstepoort Veterinary Science Campus (University of Pretoria). Some of my personal favorites are Boophane disticha and Acokanthera oppositifolia.
This is going to be a popular video.
Everybody loves nature and the unknown.
- Aconitum = Ack-own-eye- tum. Yeah you wear rubber gloves when handling this: you can get nausea, local numbness just touching any part of the plant.
- Solanaceae family (Nightshades): 4-5 nightshade berries = LD50 for avg adult male. Atropine, and other Tropane alkaloids are in various other species in the family. (IE Jimweed, mandrake, etc).
Putting this garden on my travel itinerary
If you want to get as close as you can to having dinner on the Titanic, The White Swan in Alnwick (pronounced Annick) has the RMS Olympic (Titanic’s sister) First Class lounge and parts of the grand staircase. This place on my bucket list!
It's a neat, and rather disturbing irony that death, is one of the most fascinating things in life.
"Ahln-wick"? That is how I pronounced it many years ago and was laughed at by the locals. "Annick" was the correction I was given. ;)
Odd. I remember visiting a 'poison garden' when walking across England on the Hadrian's Wall path but it clearly can't be Alnwick since that is rather farther north. I get lost but even I don't get THAT lost. Doesn't anyone know what the other garden might have been? This would have been circa 2010.
Somethink else to add to my bucket list! Thankyou
sorry Simon, i don't want to be this guy, but since I went to high school there: it's "An-ick" not "Aln-wick", old english town names being what they are haha
There's a village not too far from Alnwick called Ulgham - pronounced Uffam.
I’m 1:04 in and came to the comments to say the same hahaha
I was going to say the same thing 😁
Thanks for being that guy 🎉
But u ended up being that guy!
Hay Australia you may have all the deadly snakes and spiders but we got green things. not so tough now are ya.
I've been here, it was awsome, love the rest of the gardens too. Of course I had to do the movie tour of the castle too.
I’ve been there didn’t have time for the gardens tho. It’s nice that Mrs Whistler dressed Simon in his sailor suit today
Poison as a topic is also very interesting as it is far more intricate to use than just making a plant extract (for example). The pathway, a poisonous molecule takes in the body, is key in how effective a specific dose is.
Foxglove also grows wild where im from. Dont eat it either
Nice, we have a laburnum tree at the end of the drive. Had to chase a guy on horseback away once as the horse was about to eat some of the leaves & flowers.
Now I'm curious what difference, if any, there is between the rhododendrons in the poison garden and in the ones that are sold at pretty much every garden center...
Truth be told- not much difference at all! It’s really surprising how many landscape plants are very toxic!!
The same. But he is exaggerating a bit.
None. You can get most of the plants grown in the poison garden from most garden centres or even supermarkets. I have my own poison garden. The majority of flowering bulbs are poisonous. Before I planted my garden I tried researching safe plants for dogs, intending to make a dog safe garden, but soon realised that all my favourite flowers are poisonous so I have a food garden in the front and a poison garden in the back.
My garden is full of toxins :) Aconite in your garden was punishable by death in Roman times. I have quite a bit, its very pretty.
It's funny because the first time I heard of Aconite was from the pilot episode of the show "Forever" where the main character is immortal and he calls death by Aconite a terrible way to go, as he keeps a record of his deaths and ranks them. I was interested in the plant/toxin so looked it up and apparently it's theorized that notable figures in history have been murdered/committed suicide via it's poison.
Kids books ages ago said steer clear of Foxgloves. Don't even touch the flowers.
@@duncancurtis5108 Picked all the time for vases. Should wash your hands after though.
I have childhood memories of putting the fox glove flowers on my fingers like gloves once, I don’t remember anything happening to me thankfully 😅
@@GrungeGalactica Lol there's so many times when I think back on things I did as a kid, I really wonder how I'm still here :s
Simon doing some gardening of his own? or is it the Blazement shrooms
The manchineel (sp?) Native to Florida would be right at home there.
Maybe it doesn’t grow well in the British climate since it’s a tropical plant designed to be eaten by iguanas and only iguanas.
Rain ☔️ around the manchineel can burn the skin!
Alnwick is pronounced Annik.
plus it was the location used for the first season of Blackadder, far more important than some kid wizzard!
Thanks for that I was going to say that too. Plus Markov was not the only person to be attacked by a ricin umbrella a french Bulgarian dissident was attacked first. He was extremely lucky to survive!
I came here to say that
Simon's pronunciation just made me cringe. I guess that being a southerner who lives in foreign parts and probably thinks that northern England is a wasteland, we shouldn't be too surprised. 😂❤❤❤😂
Yeah, made my teeth itch a tad. Alnwick is not far from where I live... we have many places with odd pronunciations here. Not as weird as when I lived in Nova Scotia though!
I've heard of this garden, fascinating stuff. My favorite is the gimpy-gimpy strictly for its name!
Bring out the Gimpy-Gimpy.
@archstanton6102 If that plant doesn't have a red bulb somewhere, well, I'll just say nature missed a golden opportunity.
My mother plants various flower bushes at the border between our house's front yard and the roadside (we're not fenced off), and once in a while a herd of water buffaloes/cows that its owner let out to roam around our village come along and feasts on said flower bushes. Throughout the years, my mom figured out what flower bushes to plant that the cows/buffaloes absolutely won't go anywhere near, either because it was poisonous or it's just not delicious for the animals to eat. 😆
Do one on the gardens in Tuscany that inspired her!!!
I’ve been here. It’s beautiful and educational.
"I can tolerate plants that can literally kill you but I draw the line as being naked around them!" - Simon Whistler, basically.
Way, way back when, say the mid to early 90s, and I'm a kid, 6 or 7, and my dad is a dairy farmer, so I live on a dairy farm, and dairy farmers up in New York grow corn, so attached to the parlor, or kind of behind it by the silos of feed, but just beyond that was CORN!
Lots of the stuff, used to eat it raw, probably ate crop dust, anyway... The corn has huge spiders, Saint Andrew's spiders if you want to get a good look, and the boys of the farm's owner used to hang out with me, and we would go out in the corn fields, and they would put those big spiders in jars of chloroform? They called it that, but I was at most 6, so what would I know?
They had lots of those spiders in jars, I don't know why they started doing it, but they did. Maybe collecting bugs and spiders and stuff like that is just rich kid stuff? Or, maybe it was due to lack of Pokemans for them to catch all of?
I don't know why I remember that, it just stuck with me for decades. I'm sure those two are fine now, and grown up, but kids are weird.
How dangerous is the Garden itself? Actually a net positive to human life.
Amazing.
I had never heard of this before, but now I have a reason to want to go to the UK!
My last visit to the Alnwick Garden Poison Garden was ruined by Michael Bay's aerial filming unit doing low helicopter passes of the castle for some Transformer movie.
So, I should do something about that deadly nightshade taking over my back garden.
while they cage up the pot
It’s a wonderful place, for everything from its Harry Potter locations, its history, its stunning gardens, both poison and not, to its excellent tours.
A poison garden is also the plot of the James Bond novel "You Only Live Twice." A foreigner had bought a castle, and imported a variety of poisonous plants to go along with a pool of piranha and some volcanic fissures. It wasn't open to the public, but became a popular suicide spot. The movie had almost zero resemblance to the novel, except for the setting in Japan.
I drove through here a week ago. Should have stopped.
9:19 As a teen on a school camp in Wallaman Gorge. I brushed just against the edge, just the very edge, of the leaves. It instantly felt like someone had taken a red hot metal rod and held it against my leg constantly for several hours. It was still extremely painful weeks later and a hot or cold shower months later could make it flare up. It's no joke. The worst swear word in the Aboriginal language where this grows most frequently is 'gympie'. This is called the gympie gympie because it's so bad, saying the worst word once isn't enough.
It's said, though probably apocryphal that the 'suicide bush' name came from a guy who, accidentally, or on a dare, versions differ, wiped his backside with a leaf and shot himself because of the pain.
Wisconsin here. We have all sorts of fun posion plants too! I try to stay aware as a hand full of nettles is no fun poison oak even more no fun. Surprised no mention of poison hemlock so common in many areas. Good to know the duchess has her eye on that really scary one though. Don't want the munchies infecting the general population. Terrifying.
well, you could try Porton Down, for the few moments it takes for security to catch you.
I have a Purple Nightshade plant growing right outside my front door.
I've got castor plants, foxglove and hellbores, but does it have Doll's Eyes (White baneberry)?
(Which I also have btw)
And rosary peas?
I love the poison garden! Been there a few times. It’s beautiful.
This place was already oj my Harry Potter bucket list and I didn't even know about the poison garden until now. Definitely gotta check it out when I head back to England.
DARK ARTS!
General rule of thumb with nature. The more beautiful, stunning and exotic the color that means you should avoid it.
Colyton! Most rebellious town in Devon (England), historically 😅
The Duchess sounds like that cool aunt who rescued you and doesn’t tell your parents
Here on the Island of Kauai in Hawaii, theres a place where a few of these plants( and other poisonous plants not mentioned here), grow wild. Kokee State Park has several dirt roads leading off to Cabins & hiking trails. On several of these roads I've seen( growing in the roadside Jungle) Hydrangea, Castor Bean Plants, Angel's Trumpet Plants, and Monkshood. In the 1920s & 30's many Europeans settled the island, some building vacation cabins in Kokee. They had an annual Garden club competition for the most beautiful Cabin yard/ or flower gardens. I believe this was when these many invasive & poisonous species were introduced.😳🏝⛰ btw these plants are growing wild because the area has a Mountain called Mt.Waialeale ( wettest place on earth), & probably the best soil/ tropical environment for many plants.🌿🍀🌴🌳🌲🪴🌱
Definitely on my list of places to visit should I ever be fortunate enough to take a trip to the UK. Wonder what they would have for accessibility since I'm blind and don't think I'd be taking my guide dog Along on this particular outing
I have memory issues and... I still remember touching a Gimpy Gimpy as a child.
Oooh, and the fun part:
The plant was growing in a School Garden, and yes... it was peer pressure to touch it!
I love rhododendrons. And there is nothing difficult about its spelling either.
That’s pretty cool actually.. I’m not big on travel or sight seeing but I wouldn’t mind wandering this garden path.
Its a lovely garden and has a gift shop
The duchess sounds like a delightful nutball 😂
i grew many red & green Castor plants 4 quick shade in front of windows.
Had a G. Chain tree and used the hanging-yellow flowers in flower displays, had Foxgloves, plus had 3 gorgeous MonksHoods in a pot (never touched.) Rhodies grow wild in E & W USA and are common. (i never wore gloves, ate any part of them, nor composted w the leaves, so had no problem.) So, what good are Gympie trees?? (naked Brits seems an oxymoron : ))
What's up with the Where's Waldo shirt?
Knew they'd have our scary little Aussie plant if they wanted to make things really deadly.
What about NZ Tree Nettle? Ongaonga- Urtica ferox. Same modus operandi.
I am not a British aristocrat just a weird-o that loves odd plants so I planted a poison garden. Don't worry it can only hurt me. I live in the middle of nowhere and my relatives know to destroy it when I die.
We went last year, it's a really interesting tour, ngl. Definitely recommend going if you get the chance
0:40 Note the citation in the top left for the picture when delivering the line "her love of nature with her fascination with death." Was that picture chose just so the source could be ironic?
The UA-cam comment section is the more commonly known poison garden.
I've been to Alnwick Castle many years ago, to visit the Hogwarts filming sites, and I had no idea about this garden, there were no signs anywhere that I can remember. According to Wiki it would've been recently opened. The property is huge though and I'm sure we missed some things, and perhaps the collection wouldn't have been as big as it is now.
There is a story told by your guides of a man who was out trekking in the Daintree and decided to grab the closest leaves available as loo paper; of course he grabbed the gympie-gympie leaves... Apparently some people have even committed suicide the pain is so bad and persistent
the best thing I learned today is that there's a nude tour of the poison garden led by a dutchess with a rad sense of humor
Lovely gardens, aristocrats, visitors, money, poisons... Ideal setting for a novel by Agatha Christie.
Someone has to say it: Do they have a gift shop?
The castle does, unsure about the garden.
@@archstanton6102 The garden does (the poison garden is a small part of a larger garden for those who don't know) and they do have a range of merch with skulls and stuff on. I don't think they sell any of the dangerous plants in the garden centre bit though lol.
That quote hurt my head a little:
Curing, Killing... it is via the same methods... bio-chemistry!
Either way you look at it, it is a fascinating subject....
Woah got here fast