An Environmental and Horticultural Learning Center

 Making Nature & the Outdoors Accessible to Everyone!

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 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.

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.