YAKIMA, Wash.- Kara Lolley made it a habit of delivering flowers to her late friend Candace who was in a long-term care facility suffering from Parkinson’s disease. She would bring her friend flowers every week, when finally, a nurse stopped her, and said Candace hasn’t been just leaving the flowers in her room.
“She takes them apart and makes small posies and has the nurses deliver them up and down the hallway to other residents,” said Lolley of what the nurses told her.
After her friend passed, Lolley decided to honor Candace by bringing hope to those in care facilities through Petals for Patients.
The nonprofit organization grows the flowers from the Canyon Blooms farm and delivers them three times a week to 15 different medical facilities in the Yakima Valley.
“We found the flowers particularly meaningful for people dealing with fear and anxiety,” said Lolley. “There’s a magic in fresh flowers.”
It’s part of Lolley fighting what she’s seen called the loneliness epidemic. After starting the mission during the COVID-19 pandemic, she hoped the trend would end soon, but she’s seen the need to share kindness in the community.
“I wondered if this project would end as we came out of COVID and it’s clear there’s as much of a need for it now as there was in the early days of COVID,” says Lolley.
200 vases of flowers are delivered to the medical teams every week, who will delegate the flowers to people who need it the most. Lolley tells me the deliveries become a “relationship tool” between the caregivers and patients to build a rapport.
The vases always go to the medical team and they know best who has the most need for flowers. It also becomes a relationship tool between the caregivers and the patients.
“That’s what we’re addressing,” said Lolley. “It’s the connection between people and flowers are just a lovely way of bringing a little humanity.”
With a team of volunteers harvesting and putting together the flowers, Petals for Patients just passed its one-year anniversary as a non-profit. With the time and dedication on the farm, Lolley only expects more growth for the team.
“I’m here four days a week and we’re harvesting seven days a week to make this program work,” said Lolley. “We’re currently putting out 200 vases a week and by the end of the month I think we’ll be at 400 vases a week.”
The Canyon Bloom Farms is welcoming the public to farm tours to see where the magic happens. The farm will be open on August 17 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., August 26 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and September 16 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Petals for Patients is also looking for more volunteers and donations to help upgrade their services, after already expanding their cold room for the extra flowers being harvested.
