Neil Van Lierop, ‘valley boss’ and giant of daffodil farming in Puyallup, dies at 86
When Krista Linden negotiated with Neil Van Lierop nearly a decade ago to buy part of his historic farmland in Puyallup, she told him he could live on it for the rest of his life.
“That’s how all the farmers in my family wanted to go,” she told The News Tribune, and she thinks the promise is part of what helped him decide to sell.
Van Lierop, a giant of Pierce County agriculture who grew flowers and bulbs for decades, died at the age of 86 on Sept. 21 in his home on that property.
When Linden saw him after his passing, she said he was in his easy chair, with his hunting blanket around his neck and his slippers on his feet.
There was no anguish on his face, she said. He looked peaceful.
Van Lierop was the fifth generation of his family in the flower farming business. It was 1934 when they started the Van Lierop Bulb Farm in Puyallup, and it became an iconic daffodil and tulip farm in the region.
The farm near Shaw Road East and Pioneer Way East closed in 2013, The News Tribune reported.
The Van Lierop legacy lived on in what Linden built on the property and in the adjacent Van Lierop Park that the city built on an 18-acre piece of the farmland. The park has a lupine field that blooms with Mount Rainier in the backdrop each year.
Linden turned her 6-acre piece of the property into the Farm 12 restaurant and event venue, Fika coffee shop, and headquarters of their parent nonprofit, Step By Step. The businesses support the nonprofit’s mission of helping families in need, in particular mothers and babies, with parenting skills, job training, mentorship, homelessness prevention and other programs.
The name of the restaurant, Farm 12, is a nod to the land’s agricultural history. Each farm in the local bulb exchange had a number. Van Lierop’s was 12. The farm’s iconic red trucks were also part of the restaurant’s early branding. Van Lierop told The News Tribune in 2015 that he liked that Linden was willing to maintain the integrity of the buildings on the farm.
In retirement, he had a front-row seat from his home on the property to see Farm 12 grow.
Linden said they built him a privacy fence at one point, but he asked them to take it down. He liked seeing visitors come and go.
She’d been worried recently that they were getting to a point where he’d need to move to a nursing home.
He’d been in and out of a rehabilitation center in recent months following several falls, she said.
She was surprised and delighted to see he’d returned home recently.
When she walked up to his sliding glass door and saw him inside, they each threw up their arms in celebration.
“You’re here, you’re home!” she called to him.
‘He was not afraid of work.’
Those who worked for Van Lierop told The News Tribune they remember him as a great boss and a kind man with a contagious work ethic, who shared his wisdom with thousands of young employees over the years.
Doug Redford, 75, worked for Van Lierop for about nine years on the farm, starting as a teenager.
“He was not afraid of work, and I think he was very proud of his Dutch heritage,” Redford said.
Van Lierop’s obituary said he is survived by his wife, Lore; his brother Pete Van Lierop; three daughters from his previous marriage: Cindi Anderson, April Miller and Anne Johnson; three grandchildren and two step-grandchildren; nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his sister, Joanne Peterson, and his parents, Simon and Beatrice Van Lierop.
Van Lierop’s obituary said his father arrived from Holland in 1929 and later started the farm.
Van Lierop took trips to the Netherlands to buy bulbs, to keep on top of the industry, Redford said.
He was innovative, wasn’t afraid to take risks, and at the height of the farm had 160 acres, including land that he leased near Clarks Creek and in the Dieringer area, Redford said.
Teresa Wingard lived across the street from the main farm with her parents and seven siblings growing up. All 10 of them worked on the farm at various points over a period of something like 25 years until the mid ‘80s.
Wingard, now 62, started working for Van Lierop as a teenager.
“He expected excellence,” Wingard said. “In every inch of this farm, he expected excellence.”
She remembers he started a leaderboard to show who sorted the most bulbs each day.
“I was number one for a long time,” she said. “... You didn’t want to let him down.”
She said he was the “best boss ever.” Her wages from working at the farm were enough to buy her own school clothes, she said.
“He was the valley dad, the valley boss,” Wingard said.
A soft-spoken, ‘gentle giant’
Tracy Nix, Wingard’s twin brother, and others said Van Lierop was a “gentle giant” with a soft voice. Nix himself is nearly 6-foot-6. He said Van Lierop was taller.
He was also exceedingly patient.
Van Lierop had him take the wheel of the farm truck in the field when Nix was about 15, and Van Lierop crawled in the back and started throwing cardboard boxes like Frisbees as they drove, to distribute them throughout the field.
Nix was nervous, but handled the truck okay up until it was time to head back.
He put in the clutch and took off too quickly, throwing Van Lierop out of the back of the truck in the process.
“I look behind me and Neil is on the ground with 50 boxes,” Nix said, laughing. “He didn’t say a word to me.”
He just climbed back on the truck and they kept going.
Van Lierop had a way of fixing things with a story, his former employees said.
For instance: When some of the teenagers were planting too many bulbs per foot one day, instead of just telling them to cut it out, he gave them an explanation.
The flowers would be too short if they planted bulbs that way. It’s like if he asked all of them to share a hamburger, he said. No good. Better to have one hamburger for each teenager, right?
It was a real-word example. Van Lierop brought all the workers hamburgers from the A&W restaurant on Main Street each day, Nix said.
“He and I would always get four burgers,” he said. “He didn’t even ask me.”
‘You respected him and you worked hard for him.’
The days were long and challenging, those who worked on the farm said, but they describe them fondly.
Van Lierop made sure country music was always on the radio at the farm, and the teenagers threw dirt clods at rival Knutson Farms trucks when they drove by, Nix said
Van Lierop worked incredibly hard, and those who worked for him wanted to do the same.
“You respected him and you worked hard for him,” 72-year-old Reggie Nix, another of Wingard’s siblings, said.
That work ethic is also how Van Lierop approached a contentious and drawn-out land-use dispute that embroiled the sale of 22 acres of his farmland after he retired, The News Tribune reported. Litigation between warehouse developers and the city followed. A company that ultimately purchased that land built a 450,000-square-foot warehouse, The News Tribune reported.
“It’s been a difficult life,” Van Lierop told The News Tribune in 2015 about his challenges with the city. Lessons from his hard-working father helped him through it, he said. “My dad prepared me for that stuff.”
Former Mayor John Knutson (no relation to Knutson farms), was elected to the Puyallup City Council during the land-use dispute.
“I wasn’t pleased with the way they were treating him,” Knutson said. “Eventually he got to sell it. It took a lot of years.”
During those years, he and Van Lierop became friends. He remembers him as a “decent, easygoing person.”
He said restrictions the city put in place prevented Van Lierop from selling sooner to financially support his retirement.
“He lost 10, 15 years of not being able to do anything,” Knutson said. “... I was definitely not on the city’s side on that. I always believed if it’s your land, you have the right to sell it, within reason.”
Knuston said he was honored to be the only member of the city the family invited to Van Lierop’s 80th birthday party.
Asked how Van Lierop thought about the future of farming in East Pierce County, Linden said: “Definitely I think in his mind you had to have hundreds and hundreds of acres to make farming work. It wasn’t profitable anymore and he was tired.”
Van Lierop was proud of what he accomplished with the farm and in the flower industry, those who knew him said.
Tracy Nix remembered Van Lierop sent daffodils to comedian Johnny Carson every year, and that a backdrop of daffodils would appear on the TV program.
“I think he just liked the show,” Nix said.
Linden said, even in retirement, Van Lierop spent thousands each spring to send tulips and daffodils to friends, family and acquaintances, including to the staff at Farm 12. He got them from a farm up north.
Linden said when she approached Van Lierop about selling her some of his land in 2014, neither of them knew what her vision for the property would become.
“We had no money and there was no reason for him to take me seriously,” she said.
But he did, she said.
He immediately started calling her “boss” or “boss lady,” and told her that he’d never interfere with what she was doing. He kept his word.
He also told her he thought the mission of supporting families was something that would have been close to his mom’s heart, and that she was smiling down on what they were doing.
“I believe he’s doing the same,” Linden said.
