Welcome to Holker Hall Garden

Visitor information

How to Get to Holker

    By car： Follow brown signs on A590 from J36， 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 and Preston for connections to major cities&airports．

Opening times

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

Admission Charges

                   Hall & Gardens Gardens

    Adults：     ￡12.00                   ￡8.00

    Groups：      ￡9.00                    ￡5.5

Special Events

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

National Garden Day 28th August

    Holker once again opens its 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 gifts while enjoying a live music show and nice street entertainment．

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.

With kids increasingly attached to their iPads, phones, and laptops how can we get them to read more books? It's easier than you think. In Michigan a barbershop is doing its part to encourage kids to read. Here's how it works: when children get their haircut at the Fuller Cut and read a book aloud to their barber during their haircut they get a $2 discount on the cut. Yes, it really is that simple: read your book aloud and you get a discount.

Griffin, who has been cutting hair at the Fuller Cut for twenty years, started the Read to Your Barber programme. He told the local media that parents love it, while the kids like getting the two dollars back—and that the two dollars often goes directly into the kids' pockets. Griffin says teachers love the initiative (创意)—they say that it does so much for the kids during the school year, for the Fuller Cut serves a diverse community with the books featuring positive images of African-Americans, which could be an astronaut, an athlete, or a writer.

This isn't the first barbershop to do this, though; Griffin said that he first read about a similar literacy (识字) programme in Harlem. Once he got the OK from his boss, the father of three began bringing his own books into the shop and soon people in the area began donating books. Griffin said, “And that's just how it started. It wasn't anything grand. I just wanted to be responsible.”

While the initiative has attracted new costumers to the barbershop, the best part, according to Griffin, is that little kids who don't know how to read watch the older kids—and then pick up a book for themselves. “When a kid thinks it's cool to read, that's a gift,” says Griffin. “If we can get kids to come back to the Fuller Cut as adults in college and they tell us, ‘Because you guys had us read here, it made me want to be a writer or journalist,’that's really the end goal.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1000 Fifth Avenue New York， NY 10028

211﹣535﹣7710 www．metmuseum．org

Entrances

Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street

Hours

Open 7 days a week．

Sunday﹣Thursday 10：00﹣17：30

Friday and Saturday 10：00﹣21：00

Closed Thanksgiving Day， December 25，January 1，and the first Monday in May

Admission

﹩25.00 recommended for adults， ﹩12.00 recommended for students， includes the Main Building and The Cloisters（回廊）on the same day； free for children under 12 with an adult．

Free with Admission

All special exhibitions，as well as films，lectures，guided tours， concerts， gallery talks， and family/children's programs are free with admission．

Ask about today's activities at the Great Hall Information Desk．

The Cloisters Museum and Gardens

The Cloisters museum and gardens is a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of Europe in the Middle Ages． The extensive collection consists of masterworks in sculpture， colored glass， and precious objects from Europe dating from about the 9th to the 15th century．

Hours： Open 7 days a week．

March﹣October 10：00﹣17：15

November﹣February 10：00﹣16：45

Closed Thanksgiving Day， December 25，and January 1．

BEIJING, March 14 -- The language spoken by the Li ethnic group in the southernmost Chinese province of Hainan is now threatened with extinction due to the prevalence of putonghua, the standard and official Chinese language, experts have warned.

No more than 500,000 among the 1 million Li people in Hainan can speak authentic Li language or dialect, according to experts with the Hainan Provincial Committee of China Association for Promoting Democracy, which is mainly composed of intellectuals working in the fields of culture, education, publication and science.

Li dialect, a language unique to the island province, is also the most unique language in the Zhuang-Dong branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The latest studies show that it has a close relationship with languages of Malay in Malaysia, Tagalog in the Philippines, and Gaoshan dialect in China's island province Taiwan.

Research into the dialect will be of great help to study the immigration history of Hainan people, and their relationship with other ethnic groups in Southeast Asian nations, experts said.

Experts with the committee suggested linguists fully study the Li language by recording existing folk tales and songs of the ethnic group.

They also advised the local government to set up a special task force and allocate special funds to preserve the endangered Li dialect.

The Li people, together with the Zhuang, Bouyei, Dong and Dai ethnic groups, can trace their origins back to the ancient "Yue" people who inhabited the areas which are now South China's Guangdong Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Yue people moved to the Hainan Island and became the Li ethnic group. However, the Li people's language is different from that spoken by other descendants of the Yue people, who live in other parts of the country. A written form for the Li language was worked out in 1957.

The wedding took place in a Birmingham hotel. The bride and her father arrived in a new black American sports car. Her father looked nervous and uncomfortable in front of the cameras. The bride wore a silk wedding dress. She smiled nervously at the waiting photographers and went to a room on the first floor where she met her future husband for the first time.

   Carla Germaine and Greg Gordell were the winners of a radio station’s competition. The aim of the competition was to find two strangers prepared to marry without having met each other. Miss Germaine, 23, is a model. Mr Cordell, 27, is a TV salesman. They were among the two hundred people who entered for a peculiar “experiment” organized by BMRB radio in Birmingham,England. Greg and Carla were among eight finalists who were interviewed live on radio. They took a lie detector (测谎仪) test and the station also spoke to their friends and family about their personalities. The competition judges included an astrologer (占星家) who declared that they were suited.

   The couple celebrated their wedding with a wedding breakfast and a party for 100 guests in the evening, but not everyone shared the joy. Miss Germaine’s mother looked anxious throughout the wedding and Mr Gordell’s parents are reported to be less than delighted.

   Organization, including the marriage guidance service Relate, have criticized the marriage. As one person put it, “We have enough problems getting young people to take marriage seriously without this. Marriage should always be about love.”

   The couple are now on aCaribbeanhoneymoon followed by journalists. Their other prizes include a year’s free use of a wonderful apartment in the center of Birmingham, and a car. But will it last?

TIANJIN, Feb. 6 - The computer viruses known as "Kompu" and "Happytime" will attack China next week, but damage will be limited, predicted the Tianjin-based National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center on Sunday.

The center - the only anti-virus products testing and certification center authorized by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security - raised the alert about the two viruses, which are expected to hit the country from Feb. 6 to 12.

The experts explained that the Wm_Kumpu virus originated in Estonia and appears on the computer screens with the messages "Mul on paha tuju!" and "Tahan kommi", which mean "I am in bad mood" and "Give me some candy".

The Vbs_Happytime, a virus in e-mail attachments, can eliminate.exe and .dll files in the computer hard disks.

Experts warned computer users who may log on to the Internet to receive mail or visit Internet chat rooms when they finish the week-long Spring Festival vacation and return to work on Monday.

The center advised computer system maintenance technicians to scrutinize their systems and upgrade anti-viral software as precautions against the viruses, before the routine working week starts on Monday.

Experts with the center said that there is no need to immediately format computer hard drives stricken with the viruses, since the viruses can not possibly damage all data on the hard disk in a short period of time. Computer users can use software and tools to restore the lost data.