HAWTHORNE — Cathy Miller knew she was on to something when Pope John Paul II admired one of her dried-flower creations.
Her husband surprised her with a trip to Vatican City, and she brought a shadow box, which displayed a dried arrangement under glass. On one particular day of their tour, thousands of spectators filled St. Peter's Square, waiting for the pope to pass through.
She held the box open, trying to draw the pope's attention.
"He stopped and came toward me," Miller said, recalling the 1982 trip in an interview at her home on 11th Avenue. "I thought I was going to faint. I could feel the blood draining out of me."
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She went on, "He blessed me on the forehead, and he said: 'Bless you, your family and your flowers.'"
Miller, who turns 90 next month, has not stopped making dried arrangements.
Her flower creations have graced the pages of almost 50 magazines, as well as the halls and rooms of the White House. She also has appeared on more than 30 live TV shows.
Most of her work now is for charities, including area hospitals and nursing homes. She gives talks at their fundraisers, and they raffle off her dried arrangements.
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Eileen Avia, president of the Wyckoff Area Garden Club, said her group raised $3,000 for its scholarship fund this past spring when Miller taught a sold-out audience how to make dried arrangements at the Ridgewood Public Library.
Miller is planning to conduct a similar tutorial at a Ridgewood church in February.
"She's the most generous, thoughtful and loving person I've ever met in my entire life," said Avia, a retired teacher. "And, she's so entertaining — that's why her fundraisers bring in so much money. She has such a reputation for entertaining people."
Extending life
Miller learned from her musically inclined parents. Her mother was a pianist, and her father established the Peragallo Pipe Organ Company, a Paterson institution that marked its centennial last year. She herself played the concert stage until she was 16.
But, when it came to hobbies, music would play second fiddle to the art of drying flowers after she and her husband, Charlie Miller, bought a farm in Ridgefield Springs, New York, a village 14 miles north of Cooperstown, in 1972.
Soil at the 33-acre farm was rich in organic fertilizer, though Miller calls it something else.
"The ground had so much cow manure that everything I planted came up gorgeous," Miller said. "I ended up doing five huge gardens."
Miller wound up with so many flowers, and at first, she did not know what to do with them.
"I just sat in the barn, and I said: 'What a waste. All of these flowers are going to die. Can't I try to make their life a little longer?'" Miller recalled.
She tried different methods to dry her flowers, finding that some, such as cockscomb, could be dried out simply by hanging upside-down.
For other varieties, Miller experimented with desiccants, like salt, sand and sugar, but nothing worked until she discovered silica gel.
The average flower takes up to five days to dry out. Most sun-loving varieties, including hydrangeas, peonies and roses, are able to be dried, said Miller, who now cultivates all of her flowers at her home garden. The farm was sold three years ago.
Each dried arrangement can last as long as 10 years. Shelves of cardboard boxes in Miller's basement workshop are filled with layers of flower buds, some of which have been drying out for years over a thin bed of silica gel.
Spreading art
In 1976, Miller's dried arrangements were featured in Family Circle magazine, a monthly home economics publication, based in New York City, that printed its last edition this month.
As a result of that piece, Miller's dried-flower creations were used to decorate the White House for decades.
The late Rex Scouten, curator of the White House, read the article and contacted Miller because, with 132 rooms, it became challenging for staff there to keep up with fresh flowers.
Miller made more than 60 dried arrangements for the White House, beginning in 1979 for former President Jimmy Carter, and for each of the next four presidents.
She maintained close ties with all of the first ladies, including Rosalynn Carter, who wrote the following note to Miller on White House letterhead on Nov. 13, 1980:
Again I want to thank you for your beautiful dried flower arrangements. We are grateful to you for being so generous with your time and talent.
And thank you, too, for the nosegay. It is a very special gift which will always be a reminder of our friendship.
As further testament to Miller's acclaim, her 1997 book, "Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers," went through four printings and still is in high demand, as novice gardeners have contacted her to try to buy remaining copies for large sums.
"It really spread," Miller said. "The art of drying flowers has really, really spread. It has brought so much joy to so many people."
She is the first to admit that her life story reads like a fairy tale, but she blames it on that chance encounter she had 37 years ago.
"I've been blessed," Miller said. In a joking tone, she added, "It's the pope — he did it."
Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: devencentis@northjersey.com Twitter: @PhilDeVencentis
How to create a dried arrangement
Cathy Miller recommends the following five steps to make the perfect flower creation:
- Do not pick flowers when they are dew-covered or wet, and cut them before peak bloom.
- Store flower buds in airtight boxes until you are ready to arrange. Add three tablespoons of silica gel to the bottom of each box.
- Make artificial stems after buds are dry by wrapping floral tape around 19-gauge, steel wire. Gently poke one end of each fake stem into each bud.
- Insert the other end of each stem into floral foam at the base of your container.
- Keep your completed arrangement out of direct sunlight.
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