Entrance to the Botany Trail Boswell Botany Trail The Southern Vermont Arts Center’s Boswell Botany Trail, a rambling, three-quarter mile nature trail dotted with rustic seats and benches, began its long career in 1917 as the nature walk of the original Webster estate. It was officially designated as the Boswell Botany Trail, in honor of its creator, Mrs. Harold "Petie" Boswell, in 1964. The trail was re-created and greatly expanded in 2001 thanks to funds from the Nichols Foundation. Replete with its wonderfully bucolic wildflower walk, the Boswell Botany Trail boasts stately white birches, native orchids, grasses and moss, most of the 67 varieties of fern found in Vermont and a towering, 300 year-old sugar maple, all in a unique glacial microclimate. An ongoing conservation and educational project of the Garden Club of Manchester, the trail is easily explored at a leisurely pace by most walkers in a half-hour or less.