Welcome to Distant Hill Gardens and Distant Hill Nature Trail

An Environmental and Horticultural Learning Center

 Making Nature & the Outdoors Accessible to Everyone!


IT's NOW OFFICIAL...

Distant Hill Won $50K From Kubota

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO VOTED FOR US!

All the votes have been certified and it's now official - Distant Hill received the most number of votes from August 1st through August 14th on the Kubota Hometown Proud website and we won the $50,000 grant award!

 

The award will allow us to make Distant Hill Nature Trail even more accessible. We plan to use the funds to partially enclose the new community pavilion, to buy a solar generator and solar panels to provide power, to purchase a monitor with a rolling stand for presentations, and to install lights and picnic tables.

 

The grant will also allow us to buy the gravel and materials to build another 1/2-mile of wheelchair and stroller accessible trail. 

Thanks to everyone who helped us win the $50,000!


Check out this 4-minute video starring David Hudgik, a frequent wheelchair user of Distant Hill Nature Trail, telling how our accessible trails have changed his life. 


“My journey usually ends when the pavement ends. But at Distant Hill Nature Trail, where the pavement ends is where my journey begins...where the adventure starts!”

                                                                        - David Hudgik


Distant Hill Defined

Distant Hill is a 155-acre property that enables visitors to enjoy and connect with nature and the outdoors. The property consists of two distinct parts:  

  • Distant Hill Nature Trail has a two-mile network of wheelchair and stroller accessible gravel trails and over three miles of hiking trails. There is a children's story book trail, a geology trail, a nature play area, ten vernal pools, and a boardwalk over a quaking cranberry bog to explore. In addition, we offer free wagons, snowshoes, sleds, butterfly nets, and more to help visitors better enjoy their time outdoors at Distant Hill.

The Nature Trail is open daily, dawn to dusk, free of charge. 

  • Distant Hill Gardens is a two-acre shrub garden created around an energy efficient passive solar home. The Gardens contain over 450 labeled plants, a raised-bed vegetable garden, a water feature and pond, lots of creative stone work including a thirty-foot diameter Stone Circle, and dozens of whimsical metal sculptures throughout.  Distant Hill Gardens is open to the public on the third weekend of May, the first and third full weekends June through September, and the first full weekend of October.

There is a fee of $10 per adult to tour the Gardens.

 

We also offer classes and workshops throughout the season on a wide range of environmental, horticultural, health, wellness, and nature-based topics.

Check out this video introducing you to the highlights of Distant Hill Nature Trail.

Both videos were created and donated by Farrell Video Productions.



Inspiring Visitors to Landscape with a Purpose

Distant Hill Gardens and Nature Trail is located on one-hundred and fifty-five acres of biodiverse forest, fields, and wetlands straddling the town-line separating Walpole and Alstead, NH. You will find us in the hills, five miles east of downtown Walpole, New Hampshire.

 

Distant Hill is an environmental and horticultural learning center dedicated to inspiring and empowering children and adults to cultivate an intimate connection to the natural world through education, observation, and play. We hope to inspire visitors to develop an ecological approach to working their land and to give them the tools to improve their landscape one plant at a time.

 

Our goal is to have visitors to Distant Hill leave with a better understanding of the vital connections between plants, animals, and humans, and how we can use Earth’s resources in a way that strengthens and sustains those connections.