The duchess and the delinquents

T he Duchess of Northumberland is posing for photographers amid a sea of schoolchildren. Parked alongside them on the manicured lawns of the Alnwick Garden, the 12-acre tourist attraction she has almost single-handedly carved out of the grounds of her husband's ancestral seat, is a smashed-up Nissan Micra.

It is an arresting juxtaposition of images but this, the duchess insisted yesterday, is what her creation in the Northumberland hills is all about. The chattering pupils had come to learn about the evils of antisocial behaviour, particularly the impact of binge-drinking and graffiti.

They did this with help from an al fresco play put on by actors dressed as lager-swilling hoodies, who demonstrated the problem with disturbing realism – marauding through the gardens, ripping up plants and spraying graffiti "tags" on buildings.

"This is what the Alnwick Garden was built for," said the duchess, 49, as she sheltered from a downpour which had swept in from the surrounding Cheviots. "It is not about putting on conventional educational programmes. It is not about conventional things at all. It is about changing lives for the better of the community."

It is an admirably altruistic sentiment – as well as good public relations – and one which might shock some of those who have criticised the duchess's efforts over the past decade. To her detractors, her redevelopment of a decaying Italian Renaissance garden and near-derelict pavilion at Alnwick has bequeathed little more than a gauche horticultural theme park – a vast experiment in "vanity gardening" with its bamboo labyrinth, Disney-esque tree house and fantasy grand cascade which cost £42m.

The criticism has at times become personal, with one newspaper claiming that the duchess – who was born plain Jane Richard, a middle-class girl from Edinburgh, before marrying into one of Britain's oldest and richest aristocratic families – "was to gardening what Imelda Marcos is to shoes". But the sniping has had little effect on the duchess, whose husband Ralph inherited his title after his elder brother's untimely death from drug abuse 13 years ago. "At least that was original," she said, laughing as she recalled the Marcos jibe. "I am so used to being hit that I get up again."

Of course, not everyone is so critical of her garden project, which achieved charitable trust status two years after it opened in 2001. Among the duchess's fans are many of the 600,000 visitors the estate receives each year – 10 times the number predicted by accountants who carried out the first feasibility study. Then there is The New York Times, which this week described Alnwick Garden as the "Versailles of the North", as well as dozens of rural businesses which have enjoyed some much-needed prosperity thanks to the popularity of the attraction and the £50m it brings to the region each year.

Others are not so easily satisfied, however. One of the key criticisms levelled at the duchess is that she has unfairly benefited from her title and connections to secure public funding for the garden. No less a green-fingered aristocrat than Lady Mary Keen, the daughter of the 6th Earl Howe, was moved to ask: "Should those who are savvier and nobler than thou attract so much more money than those who are perhaps more deserving."

Stephen Hepburn, the Labour MP for Jarrow, also questioned why the wife of a millionaire landowner should be picking up money from the public purse in an area blighted by poverty.

In fact, those close to the duchess say her noble title has not always worked in her favour – as evidenced recently when the garden missed out on a £25m lottery grant. Not being selected as a good cause provoked no little rancour. "I am thinking of having a sign put up saying 'This Is Not A Lottery Project'," the duchess said. "You think 'Why is that? Is it me? Is it because I am married to a duke?'."

For his part, the 12th Duke, who inherited a £300m fortune along with 120,000 acres of land, 171 tenanted farms, 700 cottages, and the castle with its Louis XIV furniture and sumptuous selection of Old Masters, has had little to do with the project beyond handing over the initial £9.2m in start-up costs. Since then, it has been his wife's project alone.

But despite the obvious success of the project, its failure to secure lottery money has thrown a major hurdle in the way of the garden's completion, and the duchess must still find £30m to secure its long-term future. "If I had that money tomorrow I could build it in 18 months," she said. "Our economic viability study shows that we are not sustainable until we receive that funding. You keep getting knock-backs but you keep moving forward."

Her next step forward is a speaking tour of the Hamptons in New York state – the summer playground of some of America's wealthiest and most generous philanthropists. There she will address the Southampton Garden Club before attending a dinner organised by the wife of the Manhattan financier, Martin D Gruss, where she will meet other gardening lovers.

In recent years, the duchess has toured much of the world seeking to raise the profile of her garden but, like everyone else, she must compete in a global marketplace of giving. This year, she has already spoken to audiences in Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia. She has previously travelled to the US to bang the drum for Alnwick in Chicago, New York and San Francisco. So far, she says, her trips have raised not a single penny, although they generated several follow-ups and plenty of publicity in the cities she visited.

There are those who say that outside forces have done as much as the duchess, if not more, to raise the public perception of the rural market town of Alnwick. The decision by film-makers to use the castle as a stand-in for Hogwarts School in the first two Harry Potter movies helped fuel a significant tourist boom, though lawyers at Warner Brothers studios have been careful to prevent any exploitation of the link with the boy wizard. And the decision of Country Life magazine to name Alnwick as the best place to live in Britain has also helped.

But, according to the duchess, the benevolent forces of fate have only been part of the picture. "The secret of my success is hard work – there are no short cuts," she said. "I don't know how I will find the money but I will – I have to achieve it. I will not stop until I have exhausted every avenue."

Yesterday, however, money worries were the last thing on the minds of Alnwick's young visitors from Dr Thomlinson Middle School in nearby Rothbury. Gavin Dick, 12, said he had enjoyed himself and learnt something about antisocial behaviour into the bargain. "I thought it was really good and helped you realise how bad behaviour affects everyone else. Talking about it has really changed my mind." It is just the kind of effect the duchess would like to produce in her fiercest critics.