The Bloom Project provides bedside bouquets to patients
Ever wonder what happens to the flowers nobody buys at your local grocery and flower stand?
Wonder no more. Many of them are donated to a very good cause: The Bloom Project, founded in 2007 by Heidi Berkman of Bend.
Hospitality is in Berkmans blood; she loves flowers and knows how they can lift the mood in a room. As a meeting and event planner, she cringed each time flower arrangements were simply thrown away at the end of an event. Wouldnt someone else enjoy them, she thought?
About that same time a family member was in hospice; Berkman felt helpless to comfort or relieve their pain. What could she do?
On a dark, gray day in January, nothing changes the conversation like flowers, she says. I thought I could send flowers, bringing life and color to (people), even if they are confined in bed.
Putting the two ideas together repurposing floral arrangements and sharing with those who would appreciate a bright bouquet she developed The Bloom Project in 2007. The volunteer-run nonprofit provides fresh floral bouquets to hospice and palliative-care patients to provide beauty and joy at a difficult time. The program has distributed more than 102,750 bouquets since 2009 and expanded in 2013 to serve Portland and Sacramento.
A main feature of the program is its commitment to sustainable business practices. The flowers are all donated from floral distributors, local stores, community members and special events and repurposed into bouquets; the floral waste is then composted.
Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, volunteers pick up flowers from their partner florist and grocery stores and then head to Teufel Holly Farms on Miller Road in Portland, which donates space for The Bloom Project.
Volunteers in the organization include Joan Croome, Cindy Rockwell, Diana Lavender and Mary Lewis.
Its total potluck, Lewis says. We dont know what well get.
The volunteers come from different backgrounds; most have no floral experience, just a desire to help with the project. Members of the team with floral design experience host training sessions to teach new volunteers how to care for the flowers, identify which flowers to keep and how to properly arrange a bouquet.
We make small bedside bouquets of about 15 to 18 stems, Berkman says. The bouquets have to fit in a small space.
Croome learned about The Bloom Project (www.thebloomproject.org) with her daughter on a National Charity League assignment. Since she works during the day she nudged Berkman to start a Saturday session.
I pick up the flowers from Trader Joes in Lake Oswego Saturday morning, she says. Saturday is kind of a sleeper day. But you make connections and learn the stories (of those you volunteer with). It gets all your senses involved. It feels good, and it smells good.
There are plenty of jobs for everyone to do some volunteers pick up flowers, others prep the flowers and still others arrange the bouquets. There always are floors to sweep and buckets to wash. Still others deliver flowers to the hospice and palliative-care partners.
We dont deliver right to the patients, Berkman says. We deliver to the facility, and they take them to the patients. Our hospice workers love what we bring, and our floral partners are so happy to be helping.
From delivery to Teufel Farm through the bouquet-building process to delivery you can feel and see the powerful effect the flowers have on all who touch or view them.
Having flowers brings life into the room, Berkman says. This gift opens doors, literally and figuratively.