Discover the Gardens of Northumberland: BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine

There’s a moment every gardener recognises: you step through a gate and instantly know you’re somewhere special. The air feels different, the planting has confidence, and your eyes start darting about, trying to take it all in at once – shapes, textures, combinations you’d never have thought to put together. Northumberland delivers that feeling again and again.

That’s why I’m delighted to be escorting the BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine Exclusive: Gardens of Northumberland tour. I love gardens that are both beautiful and useful – places with strong structure, great planting, and ideas you can borrow for home. This tour is exactly that: a generous, inspiring collection of gardens, enjoyed at a relaxed pace, with plenty of time to really look.

A county of contrasts: gardens with personality

Northumberland’s gardens don’t do “polite” for the sake of it. They’re bold, resilient and often wonderfully surprising. The climate can be bracing, and that shapes the gardening: shelter belts, clever use of walls and hedges, and planting that’s chosen not only for beauty but for toughness and longevity.

Across the tour you’ll encounter gardens that celebrate structure – topiary, hedging, strong axes and thoughtful vistas – alongside planting that feels generous and modern. Expect plenty of lessons in how to make a garden work hard: how to create seasonal rhythm, how to use foliage as much as flower, and how to build a planting palette that looks good even when the weather has other ideas.

Alnwick Garden: contemporary ambition on a grand scale

A standout for many visitors is The Alnwick Garden, a modern garden with a big vision. It’s a place that shows what can happen when horticulture is given room to be theatrical: bold design moves, immersive spaces, and planting that’s unapologetically impactful.

What makes Alnwick so fascinating is that it isn’t trying to be a historic garden. It’s contemporary, confident, and designed to make you feel something special – wonder, curiosity, delight. There are moments of drama and moments of calm, and it’s a brilliant reminder that gardens can be both beautiful and playful.

As we explore, I’ll be encouraging you to look at how the garden creates experience: how paths lead you, how planting is layered for depth, and how repetition and scale can turn “nice planting” into something truly memorable.

Cragside: horticulture, innovation and woodland atmosphere

Then there’s Cragside, a National Trust garden that feels like stepping into a living storybook. Set within a remarkable landscape, it’s celebrated for its woodland planting, sweeping views and the way it blends the cultivated with the wild.

Cragside is a masterclass in atmosphere. The planting often feels naturalistic, but it’s underpinned by real horticultural knowledge: using trees and shrubs to shape microclimates, creating shelter and shade, and choosing plants that thrive in the conditions. If you love rhododendrons, azaleas and woodland gardening, you’ll find plenty to admire, along with ideas for how to use structure and canopy to make a garden feel immersive.

It’s also a place that speaks to the relationship between gardens and innovation. Cragside is famously associated with pioneering technology in its time, and that spirit of ingenuity is still part of its appeal. It reminds you that gardening has always been about experimentation and adaptation.

Walled gardens: private gems and planting you can learn from

One of the joys of a tour like this is the variety: not just “big name” gardens, but also the quieter places that gardeners tend to love most – walled gardens with warm brickwork and productive borders, intimate spaces where plant choices are personal and gardens where you can get close enough to really study the planting.

Northumberland’s walled gardens are particularly instructive. They show how shelter transforms what’s possible: tender plants tucked against sun-warmed walls, long herbaceous borders protected from wind, and a sense of enclosure that makes colour and scent feel more intense. If you garden in an exposed spot, you’ll come home with fresh ideas about wind management, hedging, and creating pockets of calm.

Throughout the tour, you’ll discover plant combinations that work, design details that make a difference, and the sort of “why did they do it that way?” answers that help turn inspiration into action.

Why join an escorted, like-minded group?

Garden visits are always enjoyable, but they’re even better when you can share them with people who notice the same things you do: the way a border is paced, the choice of a shrub as a foil for perennials, the cleverness of a path line, or the quiet confidence of a well-placed tree.

As your escort, I’ll be there to add horticultural context, point out details you might otherwise miss, and help you translate what you see into ideas that will work in your own garden – whether that’s a small courtyard, an allotment, or a larger plot.

If you’re craving fresh inspiration, superb planting, and gardens that feel rooted in their landscape, this BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine Exclusive is a wonderful opportunity. Northumberland’s gardens are distinctive, surprising and deeply satisfying to visit – and they’ll stay with you long after you’re home.

Join me, David Hurrion, for an unforgettable garden journey through Northumberland – and come back with a head full of ideas and a camera full of beauty.