Poison Garden
Upper-Intermediate level
Task 1. Warm-up
Look at the pictures. How can they be connected?
Created by Margarita Avetisyan for Skyteach, 2022©
Photo by twenty20photos on Envato Elements and taken from pexels.com
Task 2. Lead-in
Follow the link, look at the main picture and answer
the questions:
1.
Have you heard about this kind of garden? What is unusual
about it?
2. Why do you think this garden exists?
3. Do you dare to enter it?
Created by Margarita Avetisyan for Skyteach, 2022©
Photo by mstandret on Envato Elements
Task 3. Plant parts
Match the words to the pictures.
1. stem 2. leaf 3. bud 4. flower 5. roots 6. seeds
а) b) c)
d) e) f)
Created by Margarita Avetisyan for Skyteach, 2022©
Photos taken from Unsplash.com
Task 4. True or False
Watch the video about the Poison Garden at Alnwick Castle in
England. Read the sentences below. There is only one true
statement. Find it and correct the false ones.
1.
The majority of the plants in the garden at Alnwick are
poisonous.
2. There are around 95 poisonous plants in the garden.
3. The gardeners always wear special protective clothes when
they tend the plants.
4. The garden was developed to educate people about poisonous
plants.
5. There are lots of poisonous plants in people’s gardens.
6. Most of the visitors to the gardens realise how dangerous
plants can be.
Created by Margarita Avetisyan for Skyteach, 2022©
Photo by macondoso on Envato Elements
Task 4.1. Adjectives
Look at the names of some poisonous plants from the garden:
Atropa Belladonna ● Datura ● Aconitine ● Laurel ● Giant Hogweed
Watch the video again and then answer the questions:
How do they effect on humans?
What are some dangerous plant parts? Name them with the
adjectives used in the video.
Created by Margarita Avetisyan for Skyteach, 2022©
Photo by picturepartners on Envato Elements
Task 5. Reading
Open the article about the most poisonous
plants in the UK.
Look at the pictures of the plants first,
choose one of them and try to guess how
dangerous it is. Then read the information
about the plant and think of adjectives that
can describe it.
Make sentences with these adjectives and
their adverbs.
For example, Wolfsbane are extremely
dangerous. People’s life will be in
extreme danger if they eat even a very
small amount of this plant.
Created by Margarita Avetisyan for Skyteach, 2022©
Photo by CreativeNature_nl on Envato Elements
Task 6. Writing
Choose one of these situations and write a short text.
Imagine that you have visited Imagine that you have applied
the Poison Garden at Alnwick. for a gardener job in the garden
Your friend is an owner of the at Alnwick. You have already
garden. He asks you to write passed the first two stages of an
a review for their website interview and now you need to
about your impressions. You pass a final exam to get this job.
should be very honest and Your task is to create a poster
say what you liked/didn’t like with advice about keeping safe
about your visit.
around poisonous plants for
parents or small children, pet
Try to use comparative and owners and junior gardeners.
superlative forms as much as Explain two things that each
possible.
group should or shouldn’t do.
Created by Margarita Avetisyan for Skyteach, 2022©
Additional task: Interesting facts
Watch the video about the
Poison Garden from a vlogger
Tom Scott and name the facts
that surprised you the most.
Some poisonous plants were
used by people.
Name at least 2 stories about
it told by a gardener.
Created by Margarita Avetisyan for Skyteach, 2022©
Photo by Nadianb on Envato Elements
Keys
Task 1.
There are dangerous plants in our planet that can harm you, and even kill.
Task 3.
1. – b; 2. – c; 3. – f; 4. – b; 5. – d; 6. – e
Task 3.
1. False - All plants are poisonous; 2. True; 3. False - they cover some parts of their
skin when they deal with particularly dangerous plants; 4. Not mentioned - It was
said to be created to be more interesting than a normal garden; 5. True; 6. False -
They don’t realise the impact these plants can have.
Task 4.1.
a) Atropa Belladonna kills you. / Datura puts you to sleep forever. / Aconitine kills
you. / Laurel produces cyanide and kills you. / Giant Hogweed burns your skin
and gives you blisters for up to seven years.
b) wonderful blue flowers, dangerous parts / crushed up berries, leaves, root and
stem, phototoxic plant
Created by Margarita Avetisyan for Skyteach, 2022©
Keys
Additional task:
In Italy, especially around Venice, ladies used to squeeze the berries of Atropa
Belladonna to get the juice and then use the juice to put in their eyes to dilate
their pupils to make them look more attractive to gentlemen. As it is toxic, slowly
you start to lose your vision.
Victorians used to use leaves of Laurel. They cut it in two, popped in a jam-jar with
the butterflies that they had captured, screw on the lid and the butterfly would
die naturally because of the cyanide poisoning.
Victorian ladies would grow the Brugmansia on their tea tables and then invite
ladies around for afternoon tea. What they would then do is in the teapot, shake
some of the pollen which would go into the tea and then the ladies would start to
loosen their tongue slightly and talk about all sorts of nonsense.
Mandragora is a very popular plant because of the Harry Potter phenomenon.
Historically, people used to think that there was a live little man underneath the
plant, because if you dug the plant up, the actual tap root would often have two
little legs and a little arm and so people imagined that it was the devil himself.
Often people said they could hear screaming as it was pulled up.
Created by Margarita Avetisyan for Skyteach, 2022©
Keys
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