After Canceling Their Annual Tulip Festival, This Oregon Farm Began Delivering Flowers To Isolated Seniors

by Elizabeth Brownfield

Mt. Hood provides a backdrop to colorful blooms at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival in Woodburn

I was visiting friends in my former hometown of Portland, Oregon several weeks ago when it became clear I’d be staying in town indefinitely due to the coronavirus crisis. Since I write about travel, I had long been scheduled to fly back to New York City and then depart for trips abroad from there. One by one, of course, those travel plans were canceled. The silver lining, I thought at the time — long before the full scope of the crisis was understood and Oregon’s stay-at-home recommendations were made — was that I’d still be in Oregon to catch the annual Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival in Woodburn. I’d visited the farm (which is located about a half hour’s drive from Portland) for the festival during my first spring living in Oregon. I was astonished that Dutch-style red windmills set amid vast fields of Technicolor tulips existed outside of The Netherlands, and I returned to the festival year after year until I moved back East.

Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm

Of course when the coronavirus crises worsened, the family-run Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm was forced to cancel the festival and close its fields for the sake of public safety. That not only meant that they were stuck with 40 acres of tulips in every shade of pink, crimson, purple, gold, and orange planted in tidy rows — but also that there would be no festival-goers to buy the 9,000 pots of blooms the company had counted on selling as a major part of their annual revenue. They feared most of the flowers would remain unsold and be left to rot.

Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm

Then Wooden Shoe started getting suggestions from their social media community: Why not bring the flowers to seniors citizens living in assisted living facilities who were isolated and unable to have outside visitors due to COVID-19? What about asking people to sponsor these gifts so the farm could recoup some of their costs? Due to safety issues and logistics, Wooden Shoe wasn’t sure if they could pull the project off. But that’s when they got a call from Gritt’s Midway Greenhouse in Red House, WV. 

Gritt’s had been in a similar situation: they’d been counting on selling thousands of tulips, hyacinths, and lilies to area churches to display during their Easter services. But since church services were no longer being held, those flower orders were canceled too. Like Wooden Shoe, they had been facing a loss of 9,000 bulbs. But Gritt’s had already launched their “Send a Smile to a Senior” program, delivering donated flowers to brighten the days of assisted living facility residents. Even though the folks at Gritt’s didn’t know those at Wooden Shoe, they had reached out to share the idea and learnings with their fellow tulip growers.

That’s how Wooden Shoe came to add an option on its web site for people to sponsor a flower delivery to an isolated senior. For $15, anyone can anonymously give a pot of tulips or daffodils (with the option of a personalized note) to a resident of an assisted living facility near Woodburn that Wooden Shoe is working with on this initiative. The farm is taking extra precautions to protect the recipients, like disinfecting the pots with an alcohol solution and dropping deliveries just outside the doors of the facilities. Sponsors aren’t able to pick the recipient or facility individually. Although if people are interested in going that route, they can call Wooden Shoe to ask if the facility they have in mind is one that the farm is working with. So far, they’ve delivered about 1,700 pots, and more orders are coming in quickly.

For people living in the area, Wooden Shoe’s farm stand is also open daily from 10AM-4PM selling potted and fresh-cut tulips along with their estate-grown wine. You can also buy plenty of products that are perfect for de-stressing, like bath bombs and salts, and hemp-based tinctures and muscle gels made with hemp that was grown, dried, and put through extraction on the farm. And then there’s their house-made fudge, which should definitely count as a de-stressor in these trying times.

Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm

Wooden Shoe is also shipping tulips with next-day delivery within Oregon and Washington states for $34.99 for three bunches, including shipping — which is a bargain. Delivery is available elsewhere in the country, although they warn that the cost of next-day shipping to other states is much more expensive.

More than anything, the farm is just glad to have found a creative way to get their beautiful blooms to people who will really be able to enjoy them. To Emily Iverson, Wooden Shoe’s Social Media Manager and a 3rd-generation member of the family-run company’s team, it’s a wonderful opportunity to bring a smile to those in isolation: “Seniors in the area have visited us for the festival for so many years, we’re happy to bring them some color at the time when they need it most.”

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After Canceling Their Annual Tulip Festival, This Oregon Farm Began Delivering Flowers To Isolated Seniors