The Duchess and Her Garden NYTimes.com

ALNWICK, England

“THE criticism I’ve had is just massive,” said the Duchess of Northumberland, as she led a visitor through the Bamboo Labyrinth of Alnwick Garden. “It’s really staggering the way that Britain views this project. They said I am to gardens what Imelda Marcos is to shoes.”

Given that the project in question is, so far, a garden of 14 acres — large, but not enormous by the standards of English country estates — the duchess, 49, might seem to be laying it on a bit thick. But what she has done with these 14 acres at Alnwick Castle, her husband’s ancestral home — and what she hopes to do with them in the future, and the money that all this involves — has indeed stirred controversy, in worlds as diverse as the English gardening establishment, the British Parliament and the press. What started as a whim of the new duchess, who saw a chance to create a modern counterpoint to the adjacent 18th-century landscape designed by Lancelot (Capability) Brown, has become one of the most ambitious public gardens created in Europe since World War II, a rollicking tourist attraction widely known as the Versailles of the North. And the duchess, in her single-minded drive to make that happen, has amassed plenty of admirers, but more than a few critics as well.

The saga began in 1995, when the duchess, then 36 and known as Jane Percy, was living with her husband, Ralph, a 38-year-old property surveyor, and their four children in a farm house half an hour north of Alnwick (pronounced ANN-ick). That October Mr. Percy’s brother Harry, the 11th Duke of Northumberland, was found dead in Londonfrom an overdose of amphetamines. Ralph Percy was suddenly the 12th duke, with holdings that included 120,000 acres of land, 171 tenant farms and 700 houses and cottages, along with Alnwick Castle, with its collections of Meissen china, Louis XIV furniture and paintings by Titian, Caneletto and Van Dyke. According to The Sunday Times of London, the duke is the 270th richest person in Britain, with a fortune estimated at £300 million.

“It was a total change in 24 hours,” the duchess said. “Not because of where we lived; it was the way that people related to you. Even good friends sent me letters saying, ‘I’m furious — now you’re going to change.’ ”

Her husband, she said, warned her that there would be challenges. “He said, ‘Don’t expect to win, you’ve just got to do your best,’ ” she said. “I thought, What’s he talking about? He’s being such a drama queen.” Now, though, she sees the troubles she had with the garden as evidence he was right. “In England, if you’re married to a duke and raise your head above the parapet and do something on this scale, it’s considered to be overly ambitious,” she said. “The attitude is that you should stay in your castle.”

At first, she was just looking for something to do in her new role. On a walk near the castle in late 1995, she wandered with her dogs through the site of the former gardens, a walled enclosure that had been planted for 40 years with spruce trees, part of a commercial lumber business that helped support the estate. She had grown up around greenery in Scotland — her mother was an avid gardener — and had occasionally helped friends design gardens “for fun”; now she began talking with her husband about reviving the gardens at Alnwick.

Even at this early stage, she wasn’t thinking small: “To do anything,” she told the duke, “I’m going to need a million pounds.” But over the next year, her vision became grander, expanding to encompass a public garden that would draw visitors from all over the country. The duke eventually put in £8 million (about million at the time) through his charitable trust, half in the form of a loan, and the duchess embarked on a fund-raising campaign that is still ongoing.

She also became increasingly determined that the garden should be modern, not a recreation of Alnwick’s long-derelict 18th- and 19th-century gardens — a decision, she said, that would lead to the first of her troubles.