How Two Lifelong Friends Are Bringing Joy to Seniors Through Repurposed Flowers

Laura Hogan and Karen Wooldridge have been in the flower business for six years, but they are neither cultivators nor designers. Instead, the childhood friends started a nonprofit, Bluebirds & Blooms, that collects donated flowers and delivers them to senior citizens in local memory care communities.

Hogan, a self-described “idea person,” was working as a move manager alongside Wooldridge for a senior relocation company when the seed of a vision for a nonprofit first germinated in her mind. “I heard a story about a woman in Idaho who was a gardener for a hospice,” Hogan says. “She collected flowers and brought them inside, delivering them personally to [residents].”

Both Hogan and Wooldridge noticed that many of their clients had amassed large collections of vases and jars over the years. “We would downsize people’s homes, and we saw the waste —  all the jars and vases we were getting rid of,” she says. Hogan also knew that perfectly good flowers were being thrown away every day (“If a grocery store has a dozen roses for sale and one head breaks off, they often discard the remaining 11 flowers.”), and that led her to wonder what happens to flowers that are left over from weddings, funerals, and other events.

That’s when the idea for Bluebirds & Blooms began to blossom. “I had an idea for collecting these discarded flowers, arranging them in small bedside bouquets in donated mason jars and vases, and delivering them to seniors in memory care.” But Hogan wasn’t sure she was up to the task of launching a nonprofit on her own.

Fortunately, her college-aged daughter, Martha, was there to encourage her. “I was talking about the idea and a name for the nonprofit,” Hogan says. “Finally, my daughter said, ‘Mom, would you stop talking about it and just do it?’” It was the push Hogan needed. “As a mom, you want to show your [children] that you can take risks,” she says.

Serendipitous timing

Still, Hogan knew she couldn’t manage the project alone, so she reached out to Wooldridge, whom she first met in Bluebirds, a group for elementary school girls within the Camp Fire organization. “I thought Karen would be a perfect fit for a partner. Our mothers had been friends, and we’d always had that connection.”

The two met for coffee, and Hogan outlined her idea. When Wooldridge heard Hogan’s proposal, she could hardly believe her ears. Says Wooldridge: “Little did Laura know that I had this dream in the back of my mind about a nonprofit flower business where I would do boutonnieres and corsages and sell them. For each one purchased, one would be donated in an underserved community. I had thought about the idea for years, but I hadn’t done anything.” 

For Wooldridge, Hogan’s idea came along at just the right time. “It was a few years after my father passed away from Alzheimer’s,” she says, adding that facilitating flower deliveries to seniors in memory care was “something I could do to honor my father. That meant a lot to me.”

In the early days after Bluebirds & Blooms’ founding in 2018, the two women worked out of their suburban Minneapolis homes and did everything themselves — from the menial work of soaking and washing jars to cold calling grocery stores to gathering and arranging donated flowers to making the deliveries. Soon, their children, moms, close friends, and even some extended family got involved. “They were our first volunteers, and we relied on them very heavily,” Hogan recalls. “Our families have really grown with the nonprofit more than anybody else. They are so proud of it.”   

How it works

Today, Bluebirds & Blooms has both paid staff and a robust roster of volunteers (as well as a volunteer waiting list) in addition to a surplus budget. Grocery chain Trader Joe’s is the organization’s top flower donor. “They get flower deliveries six days a week,” Hogan says. “Their floral managers pick the flower buckets to remove so they can put fresh ones in.” Adds Woolridge, “We would all pay full price for those flowers. Sometimes they never even get out of their packaging, and we get brand new boxes.”

A volunteer visits multiple locations several times a week to pick up flowers, which are then dropped off at the organization’s operations center. Volunteers then “deconstruct” the flowers, taking the bouquets apart, trimming the stems, and separating them by color. The flowers are kept in coolers until another group of volunteers arrives to make the floral arrangements, which are then picked up and delivered.

Bluebirds & Blooms produces around 2,500 arrangements per month. These all eventually find a home at memory care communities and with hospice patients in 71 different locations throughout the greater Minneapolis area. “We have added some lower-income communities as well as a community that serves indigenous people,” Wooldridge says. “We also deliver to a veterans home and have recently partnered with Meals on Wheels, which delivers flowers along with the meals.”

Hogan and Wooldridge continue to work tirelessly on behalf of Bluebirds & Blooms, but they are quick to acknowledge their hardworking staff and volunteers. “We have the happiest volunteers in the world,” Wooldridge says. “And we have the most amazing staff. They are passionate, and they believe so much in our mission. They’ve done such a great job all around. We wouldn’t be where we are right now without them.”