The Alnwick Garden
The Alnwick Garden, the vision of the Duchess of Northumberland, the founding trustee of The Alnwick Garden Trust, is a unique transformational cultural project in North East England.
Playing a key role in the economic renaissance and cultural development across the North East, the first phase of The Garden opened in 2001 with the Grand Cascade, the Rose Garden and the Ornamental Garden.
Over a million visitors later, The Alnwick Garden opened its second phase of development in 2005, which included one of the largest wooden tree houses in the world, the Poison Garden, Bamboo Labyrinth and Serpent Garden.
The Alnwick Garden Trust, the charity which runs The Alnwick Garden, continues to fundraise to complete The Garden by 2008.
An independent economic impact study carried out by Caledonian Economics Ltd in 2003 has shown that The Garden has the potential, if more fully developed, to contribute to the changing image of North East England, establish cultural and social capital and create greater wealth for the North East’s rural and urban communities.
It is anticipated that, when completed in 2008, The Alnwick Garden will give up to £150 million back to the North East over ten years in economic benefits, in addition to multiple community benefits.
The project has had a major effect on Alnwick and North East England with a number of key outputs coming from the project:
- 680 jobs have been created both directly at Alnwick Gardens and externally through businesses benefiting from the existence
of the garden - Alnwick Gardens work with over 40 regional businesses
- They are heavily involved in skills development through offering work placements and training courses
- They have delivered over 250,000 learning opportunities in the last two years.
