WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

1
00:00:00.070 --> 00:00:03.460
Sometimes I go to a place and I tell stories.

2
00:00:03.460 --> 00:00:06.070
But occasionally, I go somewhere and find
not just stories

3
00:00:06.070 --> 00:00:08.050
but a really good storyteller.

4
00:00:08.050 --> 00:00:10.790
In the grounds of Alnwick Castle,
in the north of England,

5
00:00:10.790 --> 00:00:11.840
is Alnwick Garden.

6
00:00:11.840 --> 00:00:13.660
It’s not quite as old as the castle,

7
00:00:13.660 --> 00:00:15.889
that’s been here about 900 years or so,

8
00:00:15.889 --> 00:00:17.760
but it is just as impressive.

9
00:00:17.760 --> 00:00:20.590
Inside is one of the world’s
largest wooden treehouses,

10
00:00:20.590 --> 00:00:24.300
beautiful water features and also... this.

11
00:00:24.300 --> 00:00:27.650
The slightly less conventional
Alnwick Poison Garden.

12
00:00:27.650 --> 00:00:28.940
Welcome to the Poison Garden.

13
00:00:28.940 --> 00:00:31.099
All the plants in here
have the ability to kill you,

14
00:00:31.100 --> 00:00:35.160
so you’re not allowed to touch or smell
or stand too close to them.

15
00:00:37.850 --> 00:00:39.760
This is Ricinus communis

16
00:00:39.770 --> 00:00:42.829
and you can see that it has
very architectural leaves,

17
00:00:42.829 --> 00:00:43.890
but the issue with it is

18
00:00:43.890 --> 00:00:47.390
that you can, under laboratory environments,
take out ricin.

19
00:00:47.390 --> 00:00:50.260
Ricin is the deadliest poison known to man.

20
00:00:50.260 --> 00:00:52.410
Here we have Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade,

21
00:00:52.410 --> 00:00:54.790
a native plant to the UK.

22
00:00:54.790 --> 00:00:56.510
These flowers that you can see here

23
00:00:56.510 --> 00:00:59.920
will produce a black grape-like berry.

24
00:00:59.920 --> 00:01:02.420
Four of those berries
are enough to kill a child.

25
00:01:02.420 --> 00:01:03.579
Very toxic indeed.

26
00:01:03.579 --> 00:01:06.290
In Italy, especially around Venice,

27
00:01:06.290 --> 00:01:09.910
the ladies used to squeeze the berries to
get the juice

28
00:01:09.910 --> 00:01:12.460
and then use the juice to put in their eyes

29
00:01:12.460 --> 00:01:15.810
to dilate their pupils to make them look more
attractive to gentlemen.

30
00:01:15.810 --> 00:01:18.680
Because it’s toxic, slowly you start to
lose your vision.

31
00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:19.870
What you do for vanity.

32
00:01:19.870 --> 00:01:22.670
Ruta graveolens, again, a very common plant

33
00:01:22.670 --> 00:01:26.920
that you can actually buy from garden centres,
yet it is phototoxic

34
00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:29.450
which means that if you
get the sap onto your hands,

35
00:01:29.450 --> 00:01:32.360
then in bright sunlight
your skin will start to blister.

36
00:01:32.360 --> 00:01:34.450
Once that chemical is in your system,

37
00:01:34.450 --> 00:01:36.810
it will stay in that system
for up to seven years.

38
00:01:36.810 --> 00:01:41.290
Now, we had a senior gardener
who came into the Poison Garden

39
00:01:41.290 --> 00:01:44.440
and happened to see a weed
growing out of this plant,

40
00:01:44.440 --> 00:01:47.600
so without putting her gloves on
she took the weed out.

41
00:01:47.610 --> 00:01:50.399
Within an hour, she started to form
blisters on her hand

42
00:01:50.399 --> 00:01:52.540
and she ended up with third degree burns.

43
00:01:52.540 --> 00:01:55.060
This plant is called Aconitum napellus.

44
00:01:55.060 --> 00:01:56.409
It’s very common.

45
00:01:56.409 --> 00:01:57.710
It’s often called monkshood.

46
00:01:57.710 --> 00:01:59.869
The whole of the plant is very toxic.

47
00:01:59.869 --> 00:02:02.740
Two years ago, there was a head gardener
down in Surrey

48
00:02:02.740 --> 00:02:05.689
who unfortunately was working with this plant

49
00:02:05.689 --> 00:02:08.690
and he died a few days later,

50
00:02:08.690 --> 00:02:11.340
and they put that down to
the toxins from the plant.

51
00:02:11.340 --> 00:02:13.030
Here we have a very common plant again.

52
00:02:13.030 --> 00:02:15.050
This is laurel, used often as hedging.

53
00:02:15.050 --> 00:02:18.450
The issue with laurel is that
it will produce cyanide

54
00:02:18.450 --> 00:02:22.070
and in fact, Victorians used to use
leaves of these plants.

55
00:02:22.070 --> 00:02:26.480
Cut in two, popped in a jam-jar
with the butterflies that they’d captured,

56
00:02:26.480 --> 00:02:28.790
screw on the lid and the
butterfly would die naturally

57
00:02:28.790 --> 00:02:30.320
because of the cyanide poisoning.

58
00:02:30.320 --> 00:02:33.940
Now, this plant you can buy from garden centres,

59
00:02:33.940 --> 00:02:37.240
a very common pot plant, it’s called Brugmansia

60
00:02:37.240 --> 00:02:40.170
and the whole of the plant is toxic.

61
00:02:40.170 --> 00:02:41.950
It’s often called the Angel’s Trumpet.

62
00:02:41.950 --> 00:02:46.370
It’s an hallucinogenic plant so you can
use it in all sorts of ways.

63
00:02:46.370 --> 00:02:50.590
In fact, Victorian ladies would grow the Brugmansia
on their tea tables

64
00:02:50.590 --> 00:02:53.510
and then invite ladies around
for afternoon tea.

65
00:02:53.510 --> 00:02:56.100
What they would then do is in the tea pot,

66
00:02:56.100 --> 00:02:58.170
shake some of the pollen
which would go into the tea

67
00:02:58.170 --> 00:03:01.530
and then the ladies would to start to
loosen their tongue slightly

68
00:03:01.530 --> 00:03:03.950
and talk about all sorts of nonsense.

69
00:03:03.950 --> 00:03:06.600
We have a licence from the Home Office
to grow cannabis.

70
00:03:06.600 --> 00:03:07.880
So we have it here in a cage.

71
00:03:07.880 --> 00:03:10.040
Obviously, it’s a Class C drug.

72
00:03:10.040 --> 00:03:13.180
We use this plant to start
to introduce to children

73
00:03:13.180 --> 00:03:15.270
all about the harmful effects of drugs.

74
00:03:15.270 --> 00:03:16.500
This is Henbane.

75
00:03:16.500 --> 00:03:18.990
It produces very peculiar flowers

76
00:03:18.990 --> 00:03:21.560
that give off a very pungent scent.

77
00:03:21.560 --> 00:03:25.360
The scent is so strong that often here we
get people collapsing,

78
00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:27.720
that’s why we’ve got the bench
next to the wall.

79
00:03:27.720 --> 00:03:30.440
Mandragora, or Mandrake
as it’s commonly known,

80
00:03:30.440 --> 00:03:33.640
a very popular plant now because of the
Harry Potter phenomenon.

81
00:03:33.640 --> 00:03:36.250
The whole of the plant is poisonous.

82
00:03:36.250 --> 00:03:40.310
Historically, people used to think that there
was a live little man

83
00:03:40.310 --> 00:03:42.940
underneath the plant,
because if you dug the plant up,

84
00:03:42.940 --> 00:03:46.750
the actual tap root would often have
two little legs and a little arm

85
00:03:46.750 --> 00:03:49.430
and so people imagined
that it was the devil himself.

86
00:03:49.430 --> 00:03:52.540
Often people said they could hear the plant
screaming as it was pulled up,

87
00:03:52.540 --> 00:03:56.150
and so a lot of myth and legend
grew up around the Mandrake.

88
00:03:56.150 --> 00:03:59.690
The Duchess of Northumberland is the inspiration
of the whole of this garden.

89
00:03:59.690 --> 00:04:01.780
When she became Duchess, she had a vision

90
00:04:01.780 --> 00:04:06.390
to create a modern, contemporary garden that
would educate visitors.

91
00:04:06.390 --> 00:04:10.910
So the Duchess then realised: children especially
don’t want to listen

92
00:04:10.910 --> 00:04:14.260
to talks on herb gardens
because they switch off.

93
00:04:14.260 --> 00:04:16.180
If you can tell them that the plants
are actually poisonous

94
00:04:16.180 --> 00:04:18.080
and have the ability to kill you,

95
00:04:18.080 --> 00:04:19.650
then you have the imagination of that child.

96
00:04:19.650 --> 00:04:23.190
Thank you very much to all the team at
Alnwick Garden, and to Trevor in particular!

97
00:04:23.190 --> 00:04:25.840
If you want to know more about the gardens
or the castle,

98
00:04:25.840 --> 00:04:27.120
pull down the description.