How It All Started
From a Love of Monarchs
to a Community Tradition
Donna Miller has been a monarch enthusiast since the early 2000s when her son was in second grade and his class studied the butterfly. She was hooked! Donna began learning everything she could. In 2008, she became a citizen scientist for Monarch Watch, tagging monarchs annually before their fall migration.
Four years later, Donna, along with her husband Jim, held the first monarch festival at Petals in the Pines in Canterbury, New Hampshire, to celebrate this amazing creature. This first festival “happened to be when the monarch’s overwintering population was at about its lowest ever,” Donna says. The numbers were so low that year — not just in New Hampshire, but across North America — there were no monarchs at the festival.
That did not dissuade the Millers from continuing the festival tradition. What began as a small gathering of butterfly enthusiasts has now grown into one of the region’s most beloved annual conservation celebrations. Just ten years later in 2022, the Millers saw the biggest crowd ever — over 300 attendees!
That same year, monarch citizen scientist Amira Provost joined the Millers in educating the public with conservation efforts and providing information about citizen science projects, such as the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (MLMP) through Monarch Joint Venture. Amira provided a hands-on science station with information on community projects, diseases, and tagging. Together, the three enthusiasts provided an incredible experience for attendees.
However, as the event grew over the years, parking at Petals in the Pines became problematic with attendees parking on the side of the road. The Millers were worried someone might get hurt coming to the event. They decided to change the format from a one-day event to smaller-scaled events across several days. The new structure was effective and safer. Sadly, it created more work behind the scenes for the Millers.
After the 12th Annual NH Monarch Festival in 2024, the Millers made the heart-felt decision to pass the management of the festival to Amira. They trusted she would carry on the consersation and education efforts. The following season, the festival returned as a one-day event and was held at the beautiful and historic Canterbury Shaker Village. And, while Petals in the Pines was too small of a venue to hold the beloved festival, it was discovered that Canterbury Shaker Village was a little too large. The hope is that Belmont Village is within the “Goldilocks” zone: not too small, not too big, but just right.
“We’ve also seen the monarchs rebound in the last 10 years, some years better than others. But there is still a long way to go to get their population into a safety zone of an average of 6 hectares for their overwintering area.”— Donna Miller, NH Monarch Festival Co-Founder