Wordsworth House and Garden opens for the 2024 season on March 25th in time for the Easter weekend, when families can do an Easter egg hunt through the rows of apple blossoms, tulips and daffodils in William’s childhood garden. 

The Easter Egg trail runs from Friday 29 March until Wednesday 10 April and includes 10 activities which bring you through the house’s many rooms and out in the garden to enjoy the best of spring. The price of the trail is £3 per child and includes a Rainforest Alliance chocolate egg, with a vegan and Free From option available, as a prize. Opening days are Saturday to Wednesday, 10am-4.30pm, with last entry at 4pm. 

From the 30th of March, visitors can take in this year’s exciting and timely new exhibition which showcases work from local wildlife photographers Rosamund and John Macfarlane. Co-created alongside artist Jackie Morris and author Robert Macfarlane, Wildlife Encounters: An exhibition of British Wildlife Photographs and the Tales behind them presents intimate stories of moments shared with birds and mammals across the UK’s varied landscape. This curation of striking photographs, paintings and poetry lays bare the complexity of contemporary human-wildlife relations in a time when nature hangs in the balance. 

Zoe Gilbert, Wordsworth House’s visitor experience and operations manager, said: ‘This exhibition is both a beautiful celebration of the wildlife on our doorstep and a call to action for us all to play our part in ensuring their longer-term presence and survival. We can all do our bit to support our local wildlife and create space for nature and biodiversity.’ 

Rosamund and John Macfarlane said: “We were delighted to be given free rein as to the choice of subject matter for an exhibition in Wordsworth House in 2024 by its curator Zoe Gilbert. It has been a real pleasure to choose images from our extensive archive of British wildlife photographs taken mainly over the past 15 years. We did not wish merely to show “beautiful” pictures, of which there are many nowadays, but we selected images that not only illustrated some special encounters with animals and birds, but also told a story. Our hope is that these will raise awareness amongst an audience ranging from young to old, of the increasing challenges that face much of the remaining precious wildlife of our archipelago, as well as applauding the endeavours of organisations such as Cumbria Wildlife Trust and the National Trust to ameliorate those threats.“ 

Rosamund and John are giving an evening talk with coffee and cake on Thursday 25 April, where you will get a chance to hear from them as they share stories and slides from their winter adventures in Norway and the Artic Circle. Wordsworth House and Garden is offering free entry to anyone with a Cumbrian postcode on both Saturday 6 April and Sunday 7 April so locals can enjoy what’s on their doorstep.