Welcome to Holker Hall & Gardens

By Car: Follow brown signs an A590 from JB6, M6. Approximate travel times: Windermere-20 minutes, Kendal-25 minutes, Lancaster-45 minutes, Manchester-1 hour 30 minutes.

By Rail: The nearest station is Cark-in-Cartmel with trains to Carnforth, Lancaster Preston for connections to major cities & airports.

Sunday-Friday (closed on Saturday)11:00 am-4:00pm,30 March-2nd November.

Producers: Market 13th April

Join us to taste a variety of fresh local food and drinks. Meet the producers and get some excellent recipe ideas.

Holker Garden Festival 30th May

The event celebrate its 22nd anniversary with a great show of the very best of gardening, making it one of the most popular events in gardening.

National Garden Day 28th August

Holker once again opens is gardens in aid of the disadvantaged. For just a small donation you can take a tour with our garden guide.

Winter Market 8th November

This is an event for all the family. Wander among a variety of shops selling gifs while enjoying a live music show and nice street entertainment.

Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness(荒野). But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.

Dawson did not have any of the natural conveniences of cities like London or Paris. People went there for gold. They travelled over snow-covered mountains and sailed hundreds of miles up icy rivers. The path to Dawson was covered with thirty feet of wet snow that could fall without warming. An avalanche(雪崩) once closed the path, killing 63 people. For many who made it to Dawson, however, the rewards were worth the difficult trip. Of the first 20,000 people who dug for gold, 4,000 got rich. About 100 of these stayed rich men for the rest of their lives.

But no matter how rich they were, Dawson was never comfortable. Necessities like food and wood were very expensive. But soon, the gold that Dawson depended on had all been found. The city was crowded with disappointed people with no interest in settling down, and when they heard there were new gold discoveries in Alaska, they left Dawson City as quickly as they had come. Today, people still come and go — to see where the Canadian gold rush happened. Tourism is now the chief industry of Dawson City — its present population is 762.

While famous foreign architects are invited to lead the designs of landmark buildings in China such as the new CCTV tower and the National Center for the Performing Arts, many excellent Chinese architects are making great efforts to take the center stage.

Their efforts have been proven fruitful. Wang Shu, a 49-year-old Chinese architect, won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize — which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in architecture — on February 28. He is the first Chinese citizen to win this award.

Wang serves as head of the Architecture Department at the China Academy of Art (CAA). His office is located at the Xiangshan campus(校园) of the university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Many buildings on the campus are his original creations.

The style of the campus is quite different from that of most Chinese universities. Many visitors were amazed by the complex architectural space and abundant building types. The curves(曲线) of the buildings perfectly match the rise and fall of hills, forming a unique view.

Wang collected more than 7 million abandoned bricks of different ages. He asked the workers to use traditional techniques to make the bricks into walls, roofs and corridors. This creation attracted a lot of attention thanks to its mixture of modern and traditional Chinese elements(元素).

Wang’s works show a deep understanding of modern architecture and a good knowledge of traditions. Through such a balance, he had created a new type of Chinese architecture, said Tadao Ando, the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize.

Wang believes traditions should not be sealed in glass boxes at museums. "That is only evidence that traditions once existed," he said.

"Many Chinese people have a misunderstanding of traditions. They think tradition means old things from the past. In fact, tradition also refers to the things that have been developing and that are still being created, " he said.

"Today, many Chinese people are learning Western styles and theories rather than focusing on Chinese traditions. Many people tend to talk about traditions without knowing what they really are, " said Wang.

The study of traditions should be combined with practice. Otherwise, the recreation of traditions would be artificial and empty, he said.

Adults understand what it feels like to be flooded with objects. Why do we often assume that more is more when it comes to kids and their belongings? The good news is that I can help my own kids learn earlier than I did how to live more with less.

I found the pre-holidays a good time to encourage young children to donate less-used things, and it worked. Because of our efforts, our daughter Georgia did decide to donate a large bag of toys to a little girl whose mother was unable to pay for her holiday due to illness. She chose to sell a few larger objects that were less often used when we promised to put the money into her school fund(基金)(our kindergarten daughter is serious about becoming a doctor)

For weeks, I've been thinking of bigger, deeper questions: How do we make it a habit for them? And how do we train ourselves to help them live with, need, and use less? Yesterday, I sat with my son, Shepherd, determined to test my own theory on this. I decided to play with him with only one toy for as long as it would keep his interest. I expected that one toy would keep his attention for about five minutes, ten minutes, max. I chose a red rubber ball-simple, universally available. We passed it, he tried to put it in his mouth, he tried bouncing it, rolling it, sitting on it, throwing it. It was totally, completely enough for him. Before I knew it an hour had passed and it was time to move on to lunch.

We both became absorbed in the simplicity of playing together. He had my full attention and I had his. My little experiment to find joy in a single object worked for both of us.

During my second year at the city college, I was told that the education department was offering a “free” course, called Thinking Chess, for three credits. I ______ the idea of taking the class because, after all, who doesn’t want to save a few dollars? More than that, I’d always wanted to learn chess. And, even if I weren’t ______ enough about free credits, news about our ______ was appealing enough to me. He was an international grandmaster, which ______ I wound be learning from one of the game’s ______ . I could hardly wait to meet him.

Maurice Ashley was kind and smart, a former graduate returning to teach, and this ______ was no game for him: he meant business. In his introduction, he made it ______ that our credits would be hard-earned. In order to ______ the class, among other criteria, we had to write a paper on how we plan to ______ what we would learn in class to our future professions and,   ______, to our lives. I managed to get an A in that ______ and learned life lessons that have served me well beyond the classroom.

Ten years after my chess class with Ashley, I’m still putting to use what he ______ me: “The absolute most important skill that you learn when you play chess is how to make good ______ . On every single move you have to ______ a situation, process what your opponent (对手) is doing and evaluate the best move from among all your options.” These words still ring true today in my ______ as a journalist.