When Jim Miller first bought his seven-acre property in Canterbury, it was only a small clearing surrounded by woodland. Not long after, he met his wife, Donna.
“When we decided to get married and everything,” she said, “I’m like, we’re gonna have to cut some trees down so I can grow some flowers.”
They started by trimming back smaller trees along the property to make way for their first flower garden, down by the road. In 1995, they began selling bouquets at the end of their driveway.
As their family grew, the gardens grew in kind. Donna, a stay-at-home mom, would spend her days in the woods creating spaces for her children to play and inviting playmates to join them.
One day, her friend’s son saw a snake eat a frog. “She said he has never stopped talking about that,” said Donna. “A lot of kids don’t get to witness nature. You know, we live in such an urban environment now.”
That moment planted the initial seed for Petals in the Pines, the nature center the couple would open alongside the flower farm on their property years later, in 2010.
Their goal became to give kids a space to experience, interact with and learn about nature through a mixture of play and workshops. Now, they have multiple gardens, two labyrinths, two miles of trails, a pollinator meadow and a pavilion filled with activities including musical instruments, a dress-up cabinet and a hobbit door leading to a tree house and mud kitchen.
Since 2010, Petals in the Pines has been certified as a Nature Explore Outdoor Classroom, a pollinator-friendly garden, a Monarch Way station, a Homegrown National Park site and both a wildlife and pollinator habitat through organizations like the Xerces Society and the National Wildlife Foundation.
The Millers have plans to bring more native species to their yard and create a moss garden, as well as expand their vegetable garden.
This season, however, will be their last open to the public.
They started planning their retirement four years ago, deciding to only be open five days a week rather than seven. They’ve also shifted the location of their annual Monarch Festival, which will be held on August 22 at the Tioga Pavilion in Belmont this year.
The festival had outgrown Petals in the Pines, though the Millers are happy to see the awareness the festival has brought to the butterflies, which are considered endangered by the World Wildlife Fund.
“A lot of people have been growing milkweed. Not just common milkweed, but you know the kinds that taste like ice cream to the monarchs, and so there’s so much more awareness, and cutting down on pesticides and all that kind of thing,” Jim said.
The two wanted to retire while still “young and healthy” so that they could travel and spend time with their grandchildren.
“I used to work with a lot of farmers in the state, and I’ve watched farmers much bigger than us, lots of acreage, big herds of cattle, whatever, orchards, work well into their 70s and 80s. And it is a livelihood for sure,” said Donna. “But I said, ‘I don’t want to be that person.'”
In the years since, they’ve seen this as the right decision. In 2024, Donna was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor. Her surgery was scheduled for the middle of growing season.
“I was beside myself. I’m like, ‘I’m a flower grower, I can’t.’ But I had to have it removed. And it was benign. It wasn’t cancerous, but it was kind of a wake-up call,” she said.
Since last year, Jim has been undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. The two have gotten through this season with help from neighbors and friends.
Petals in the Pines has been open from May to September every year, which has prevented the Millers from travelling during the summer. With its closing, they are excited to visit all the botanical gardens they’ve wanted to see for years, as well as the Farm and Forest Expo, which held the same week Petals in the Pines opens.
Jim is looking forward to reclaiming the vegetable gardens that, over the years, have been taken over by flowers. Both the Millers excited to be able to rotate their crops, a practice they’ve been unable to do with their single garden, but which is important for maintaining soil health and preventing pests.
Although this will be Petals in the Pines’ final season, they still hope to occasionally open for smaller programs.
“I used to do more workshops either for kids or adults, and the busier we’ve gotten here, the more the workshops have gone by the wayside. So I’m hoping to get more back into that again,” said Donna. “We still hope to do some things for families. It’s just we’re not going to be open five days a week.”
They also plan on continuing to sell their produce at the weekly Canterbury farmers market, though possibly not as regularly as they have been.
“This place has evolved a lot in all these years,” Donna said. “It’s going to evolve again.”
