As a young child, Michael Nerrie grew up exploring the forests, farms, fields, and wetlands of Wantagh, N.Y. on the south-shore of Long Island, just 25 miles from Manhattan. While Wantagh was still small rural at the time, he learned first-hand how development can destroy open land in the blink-of-an-eye, and with that—the importance of land conservation. All of his childhood haunts were gone before he was a teenager: filled in, cut down, or bulldozed to make way for housing subdivisions. Soon after graduation from Cornell University, Michael settled in Walpole with his childhood sweetheart, Kathy. For 25 years he ran his own residential design/build company specializing in creative garden and landscape structures. That passion soon blossomed into Distant Hill Gardens and Nature Trail, a non-profit environmental and horticultural learning center he and Kathy run on their 125-acre property.
LNCS is very happy to today be a part of that story!