The Garden That Keeps Growing: Distant Hill Gardens and Nature Trail in New Hampshire

In my years of writing about New England, sometimes I hear of a place I did not know about, but after I go and learn its story, I want to share it with others. This is one of those places. Because when people go there, they may think about the world a little differently, as I did.

When you drive about 15 miles north of Keene, New Hampshire, on Route 12A, with the winding Ashuelot River for company, then soon onto March Hill Road and stop where the towns of Alstead and Walpole converge, you’ll find yourself at Distant Hill Gardens and Nature Trail. Its 155 acres hold lush gardens, a sweeping lawn, a pond, a mystical stone circle, and whimsical sculptures. There are five miles of walking trails—with two of those miles smooth gravel, accessible for wheelchairs and baby strollers—that loop through forest and climb gently to a 1,235-foot summit. You might think you have stumbled upon a state park. You have not.

Distant Hill is the creation of just two people, Michael and Kathy Nerrie, who possessed the will and skill to create from a rock-strewn hayfield a world of beauty, bounty, adventure, playfulness, and hope. They each have passed 70, and what they have done here has taken close to half a century. But at a time when many might look to downsize, their life together remains a perpetual work in progress: They are still adding plantings, sculptures, trails, and projects, including a new pavilion to hold classes and, when it rains, picnickers. In some ways, it feels as if they are just getting started—though Michael notes, “The days get shorter as I get older.”

Most people do not know about Distant Hill. Only about 7,000 visit in a good year, many of them schoolkids on field trips, retirement home residents, and attendees of various workshops on gardening and sustainability. Some public gardens host that many visitors in just a week. But on a summer or fall weekend, there is a lot to take in. Michael and Kathy call all of it—forest, wetlands, play areas, walking trails—a garden. Life grows everywhere here.

Leave your car in the grassy parking area and make your way to the nearby tent. On the table will be a map and information about what you will soon find. Standing nearby is the Nerries’ house, and also Michael’s workshop. The house tells the story of a back-to-the-land couple who came to New Hampshire in the 1970s and built nearly everything here by hand with ingenuity and a devotion to using what they found on their property, or what they could reuse or repurpose from discarded items, or what they could barter for. The house faces south, and with its windows, Michael says, “when we have a sunny day and 30-degree nights, the heat never kicks on.” Inside is a room where on winter days Kathy will string up a hammock, dress as if she’s on the beach, and read.

Let us start by touring the ornamental garden, Kathy’s passion. In summer its 450 labeled plants burst with color amid the stone pathways and the greens and yellows of the shrubs that are Michael’s passion. He has spent his life building things, and he learned the art of landscaping when he worked as a self-employed builder on the estates of wealthy people and studied how the professional landscape designers worked. Then he took courses to become a certified master gardener. He looks at the land now and describes it as if it were a gallery. “Shrubs are like buildings,” he says. “The plants grow and create their own outdoor spaces.”

The garden greeted its first visitors in the late 1990s, when the Nerries welcomed the public for donations to the local food bank. It has grown in depth and complexity ever since, and today you will feel as if you are strolling through an English country estate.

It will not be difficult to find Michael and Kathy: They will be wearing Distant Hill T-shirts. That’s Kathy, likely with her hands in the dirt, either among the flowers or perhaps the impeccable raised beds of vegetables that feed them all year. The lean man with the ponytail and a graying beard, who’s always in motion—that’s Michael. They grew up two towns apart on Long Island but never knew each other, until one summer they met as young teens in the Berkshires, and their story never ended.

What you stroll through up here is the original 21 acres from an 18th-century farm that had grown over. Over the years—as the Nerries built a house and outbuildings, bartered to have a jewel of a pond dug, unearthed tons of rocks and integrated them into the garden—they’d buy an adjoining parcel, then another, and kept adding to the point where, if you wish, you can spend an entire day here and still not see all that they and their volunteers have made.

Be sure to walk through the stone circle. The idea for it began when Kathy’s family would visit on the winter solstice and everyone would sit around a stoked firepit. Deciding to build on that experience, the Nerries traveled to Ireland to study its famous stone circles. They even bought a neighbor’s 10-acre plot because Michael coveted the massive rocks he had spotted there. With a small tractor he hauled them hundreds of yards to the circle location. He selected the perfect tall sighting stone to align with the setting sun on the winter solstice. He took a metal ring from an old wagon wheel hub and fitted it to the stone, and today friends gather by the fire here to mark the beginning of winter.

To Michael, a recycling center is not where you take your discarded stuff, but rather where you discover treasures to bring home—components, say, for the whimsical sculptures that keep you company as you stroll the grounds of Distant Hill. He is still adding to his “Wizard of Oz” series, which invite visitors to look closely: A discarded funnel and ax inspired the Tin Man. The Cowardly Lion’s body is an old cement mixer, the mane a coil of old mattress springs. “I see what I find and what I have in the shop,” he says, “and wait till one of the parts speaks to me.” Tossed-aside broken-down ironing boards? Find them in flower-like installations on the nature trails, standing by the White Rock Woods Play Area, a place designed for a youngster’s imagination to catch fire. And that is where we want to go next, the paths that lead to forest, in many ways the heart of what Distant Hill means to people.

At the head of the trail network stands a kiosk. There you will find walking sticks, wagons to pull tired children, baskets and nets to collect acorns and other nature finds, nature-themed scavenger-hunt games, snowshoes for traversing trails in winter. If you know walking a distance will be challenging, call ahead and reserve the golf cart to see the sights.

All through the paths you will spy benches for taking your ease. The signs along the paths teach about the flora and fauna. A bridge fashioned from a fallen pine tree leads you into a wetland filled with birds and frogs. And some days you may be there when David Hudgik wheels out of his specially equipped van—what he calls “my spaceship”—and glides down on his electric-powered wheelchair.

When Michael first met David, and David told him what it meant to be able to immerse himself in a forest, to feel that he belonged—he knew the hundreds of hours of sweat had mattered. “A lot of what I’m doing now is designed specifically with David in mind,” Michael says. “I ask him what works, and what doesn’t.”

What Michael and Kathy Nerrie have grown is a place to watch things flourish. One day, it may be a child’s curiosity; another day, someone’s inspiration for their own garden. And then one day someone like David Hudgik shows up and finds a world he once thought he had lost, a chance to discover what might be around the bend.

“There was one moment,” David says, “where it was just me on a trail, and I came up to my favorite spot. And there was a deer with a full rack on its head, and he just watched me. I got as close as 40 feet and then he took off. I’ll always have that.”

This feature was originally published as “The Garden That Keeps Growing” in the September/October 2025 issue of Yankee.

For more information, including directions, events, and videos, go to distanthillgardens.org.

Mel Allen

Now editor at large, Mel Allen's first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and led the staff as editor from 2006 to 2025. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long-form storytelling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel is author of Here in New England: Unforgettable Stories of People, Places, and Memories That Connect Us All (Earth Sky + Water LLC, 2025).

More by Mel Allen