California farmer unleashes on TikTokers after tulip field destroyed

A California farmer is blasting social media influencers he says wrecked his tulip fields while chasing viral photos — leaving thousands of flowers trampled and forcing the popular attraction to shut down early.

John Bos, the owner of Dutch Hollow Farms in Modesto, said a flood of visitors descended on his Central Valley property after videos of the colorful tulip fields spread rapidly across TikTok.

The unexpected attention brought crowds far larger than the farm was prepared to handle — and Bos says many visitors treated the fields like a photo backdrop rather than a working farm.

“It went nuts on TikTok. We got overwhelming crowds. We kind of had a feeling it was gonna be busy, but we had no idea what was coming,” Bos told the Daily Mail.

“The amount of people that came out — they just kind of went feral out there,” he added.

Bos had planted roughly 250,000 tulips ahead of the spring picking season, expecting the usual steady flow of local visitors who come to stroll through the vibrant rows and pick flowers. Instead, the farm was swamped with thousands of people eager to snap Instagram and TikTok photos.

At the peak of the chaos, about 4,000 people showed up in a single day, Bos said. Cars stretched for roughly half a mile outside the farm, and some visitors reportedly waited up to 90 minutes just to get inside.

Once inside the fields, however, Bos said some guests began pulling tulips straight out of the ground just to stage photos — only to toss the flowers aside afterward instead of purchasing them.

“They would take gorgeous pictures out there in the middle of the field and then proceed to dump 10 or 15 stems,” Bos told the outlet.

Videos circulating on TikTok show influencers posing with large bundles of tulips, sometimes with the bulbs and roots still attached — a sign the flowers had been yanked from the soil rather than carefully cut. One clip showing a bouquet of tulips covering a user’s face racked up more than 300,000 likes.

Many viewers in the comments blasted the trend, with some saying the social media craze likely led to the farm’s early closure.

The destruction left Bos furious and forced him to take to social media to address the situation just a day after the picking season began.

“I absolutely hate the fact that after one day I need to post this. But when my picking crew tells me what a mess it is in the field. I will address it,” he wrote online, according to the Daily Mail.

“It’s the pick and dump, if you can’t control your children or adult children with picking and dumping them on the ground. Please don’t come.”

Bos argued the behavior was more than just careless — he considers it outright theft because damaged flowers can’t be sold.

“Not only does this make my field a blight, it’s essentially theft, you may not be taking it along, but it’s destructive and money out of my pocket,” he said.

The overwhelming crowds ultimately wiped out the farm’s tulip supply, forcing Dutch Hollow Farms to close its picking activities earlier than planned — even before International Women’s Day on March 8, which Bos said is normally one of the busiest days of the season.

“Everybody wants that photo, but at what sacrifice to the flower?” Bos said.

The farmer said the loss was especially painful because tulips carry deep personal meaning for his family. Bos’s parents immigrated to the United States from the Netherlands — a country famous for its tulip fields — and his mother, who once worked in a flower shop there, encouraged him to start growing them in California.

Despite the damage, Bos says he plans to reopen next season — but with stricter rules and more security to prevent a repeat of this year’s chaos.

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