Do you have what it takes to manage the world’s deadliest garden?

Across the pond, Trevor Jones will retired on March 6, 2020, after 12 years of serving Alnwick Garden as its head gardener. The garden lies on the grounds of Alnwick (pronounced “AHN-ick”) Castle in Northumberland, England, and 20 years ago it was not the splendor or tourist attraction it is today. According to its website, the garden was conceptualized in 1997 by Jane Percy, Duchess of Northumberland, and phase one began in 2001.

Ever since redevelopment, Alnwick Garden has grown bigger and bigger, and is most famously known for its poison garden. We caught up with Jones to hear about the gardening job of a lifetime, along with his most memorable experiences.

Trevor with Her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland, Jane Percy | Photo credit: Margaret Whittaker

What was your gardening experience prior to Alnwick?
TJ: I worked for the National Trust in Scotland at one of their big gardens, called Threave Gardens. It was a school of horticulture. We had a 65-acre garden and a 1,300-acre estate. I managed all of that.

How did you become the head gardener at Alnwick?
TJ: I got to the age of 50 and decided I'd either have to stay at Threave (where I was quite happy) until eventually I resigned or take up a new challenge. There was a head gardener's post here at Alnwick. I came in for the interview, got offered the post and never regretted it.

What has tending the poison garden been like?
TJ: The poison garden is really interesting. We are unique in the UK because we're the only garden that has a poison garden within it. And within that, we have over 100 different plants that all have the ability to kill you. A lot of visitors enjoy the poison garden for the experience. We give guided tours only of the poison garden. And really, the guides are storytellers, and they'll tell you all about the harmful effects of the plants and how they were used — even today — to kill one another.

As head gardener, I've got to make sure that all the plants are well looked after. When my garden team goes to maintain that area, we always use gloves. And sometimes we have to get dressed up in a protective suit and put face shields on to make sure the sap doesn't touch our skin at all. Some plants are phototoxic. That means whenever sap gets on your skin and comes in contact with sunlight, you get blisters. It's a nasty thing. We have to be quite careful when we go in there to maintain the plants.

How many different kinds of varieties of poisonous plants are there?
TJ: We have just over 100, about 115 at the moment. Some of them are there all the time; some we have to grow because they're annuals. Some we have to have a license from our government to grow because they're classified as Class C drugs.

What does a typical day of gardening look like for you?
TJ: A typical day for me starts at 7:00 a.m. I tend to walk the garden, just on my own, checking it over. And then at 7:30 a.m. my team of gardeners start to arrive. There's 12 of us altogether. And at 8:00 a.m. I will give them tasks to do within the garden, and I go out to check that they're all OK. I also give tours of the garden to some of our visitors. And I also garden myself. I'm very much a hands-on gardener. And then the day finishes at 5:00 p.m.

The Alnwick Rose was created By David Austin Roses For The Alnwick Garden | Photo credit: Margaret Whittaker

What has been the most challenging aspect of your role as head gardener?
TJ: The most challenging part for the whole of the garden is visitors. The garden was designed for 67,000 visitors per year, and we get about 350,000. There are areas within the garden that wear away very quickly. And there's areas of turf, or lawn, that we have to re-turf about every six to seven weeks because it just gets worn away with the amount of foot traffic that uses it.

What are the most popular attractions?
TJ: The most popular attraction would be the poison garden, but we also have a cherry orchard. These are all Japanese cherries, and they're one variety of cherry. And we have 357 of them. In the springtime we just have masses of blossoms. We now annually have TV coverage that time of the year because it is just such a fantastic sight to see.

What's it like to work on a living piece of history?
TJ: So that's quite amazing really. The castle is very, very old indeed. The family has lived there for 705 years now, so [there’s] a lot of history with the castle.

But the garden — the garden that I garden and look after — is the seventh garden that's been built here at Alnwick. So underneath this garden, there are six previous gardens all influenced by the fashion of the day.

The last garden, the sixth garden, fell into disrepair after the wars. It was just left, and so all the buildings fell down. The glass houses fell down, all the plant collections were lost. There were only a few mature trees from those days, and we have built this new modern, contemporary garden around that structure.

Originally, the previous gardens that were here were all private. The Duke and Duchess of Northumberland and their family used the gardens. They grew lots of fruit and veg for the castle, but also used it to entertain guests, as they did in those times. But this duchess [Jane Percy] decided she would create a modern, contemporary garden that would be open to the public and the garden that we know today was actually created from a derelict site.

The Grand Cascade | Photo credit: Margaret Whittaker

Do you personally have a favorite plant or garden?
TJ: My favorite part of the garden is the ornamental garden. It's a walled garden within the main walled garden and it's at the top of our Grand Cascade. And up there we have the largest collection of European plants in any one garden. It's full of herbaceous perennials and structured planting. And the beauty for me is that the designers created a very formal garden in that area, but then used the plants to soften the formal lines, so it's informally planted.

What events or experiences have been the most memorable of your career at Alnwick?
TJ: First would be meeting the royal family. We've had visits from the queen, and we've had visits from Prince Charles, who's our patron. I've met them on quite a number of occasions.

We also have a huge cherry blossom festival. Our cherry trees are all sponsored, so every year the duchess invites all the sponsors back to the garden for an evening. The garden is closed to the public and all the invited guests come in. They're entertained by some form of Japanese entertainment. We have canapés and drinks supplied. And then we parade up through the garden from the pavilion, to the top of the cherry orchard and everybody is given a lantern.

The lantern is in the shape of a huge cherry blossom flower with a nightlight in the middle of it. Up in the cherry orchard we'll have a blessing by a British monk or a vicar. After which, everyone parades down to the bottom of the cherry orchard where there's a big pond, and we float all the lanterns on top of the surface of the pond. So that's quite a memorable event because many people sponsor trees in memory of lost loved ones. It’s very special.

What’s the best part of your job?
TJ: The best part of my job is working for young children and teaching them how easy it is to grow food. I think if you can capture the imagination of a child, then hopefully you will start to create gardeners of the future, which is very important.

We do a lot of charity work here. We have a garden set aside purely for children to teach them how easy it is to grow their own fruits and vegetables. We select children from deprived areas or deprived schools because they might be bullied, or they might have low self-esteem or low confidence. And we then work with them throughout the growing season, until eventually they harvest what they've grown, and they make vegetable soup with all the vegetables they've grown. They're always quite surprised to see what's underneath the soil, and the fact that they can actually eat what they've grown.

What advice do you have for your successor?
TJ: Anybody that's interested has to have an open mind when it comes to this garden because you get involved with all sorts of quirky things — obviously, running and managing the poison garden. And if you go on to YouTube, you'll see videos of me all dressed up and being very dramatic, telling people about poisonous plants. The new head gardener would get involved with that. They would also get involved in quirky things that happen in the garden. Like once a year, we have a private evening event for people that want to come and take all their clothes off and just walk around the garden.

The plants in the ornamental garden are informally planted, and they soften the formal lines of the walled garden. | Photo credit: Margaret Whittaker

Really? What’s that like?
TJ: So, in the UK we have a Naked Gardening Day [Editor’s note: World Naked Gardening Day 2020 is set for May 2). Now we don't actually garden naked, but there is a society in the UK, a club, and they use us for a private event and normally the head gardener is asked to give them guided tours — pretty clothed, I might add!

But it is quite quirky, we do all sorts of things. We've even had a naked calendar, where the garden staff all decided to raise funds for the charity work that we do. And we did that by doing a naked calendar, which sold very well!

What other types of events does Alnwick host?
TJ: We get involved with a lot of events. Every weekend and every day during some of the holidays (mainly the Easter or Christmas holidays) there are events in the garden. We have street theater events, or at Christmas we illuminate the whole garden at night. Halloween is huge for us; we open the garden and spook the garden up. We have lots of actors that will chase you with chainsaws and scare the living daylights out of you. It's a fun place to work.

It sounds like it!
TJ: It's a very different garden … very, very quirky. We have the largest treehouse in the world and in there, we have a big restaurant. And there are lots of wobbly bridges that link lots of treehouse buildings together.

What are your plans once you retire?
TJ: I’m a Scot originally, so I'm moving back to southwest Scotland. I bought a small cottage with an acre of ground around it so I will develop a garden there. I also want to do quite a bit of traveling while I'm young and fit enough to do so. I'd like to go to the States, for example, and see Longwood Gardens and some of the other famous gardens there. And I'd like to go to Japan and Italy and see the gardens there.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

For more information, visit alnwickgarden.com