**Thanks to everyone who came out and purchased the flower baskets that adorned our historic downtown all summer. All 51 baskets sold out in minutes, at $20 each! Woohoo! That’s money in the kitty for 2021! We love you, Raton!**
Well Hopefully you all have noticed our beautiful hanging baskets in Historic Downtown Raton thanks to our Summer of Color activities. First, kudos to Lisa and her watering efforts we all appreciate your work in maintaining such beauty! The hanging plants are by far the best we have seen, ever, anywhere! So here is the plan to ensure those beautiful baskets of flowers that have been to carefully tended all summer by Lisa, go to loving and appreciative homes as Fall creeps in.
There is a number on each pole and corresponding hanging basket on 2nd Street. Businesses will have first right of refusal to purchase the hanging basket in front of their business if they like. The baskets will be available on a first come first serve basis. Those who are interested in reserving/purchasing a basket can either email jchatterley@cityofraton.com or text Jarrod Chatterley at 575-707-0026 which basket(s) they would like by referencing the number on the pole(s).
Payment will be collected during the sale and customers can only get their basket(s) at Heritage Park the day of the sale no early pickups. Jarrod Chatterley with Raton Parks and Rec will make a spread sheet of who gets which baskets. Those baskets not reserved before Saturday, Sept 19th will be sold at the park the day of the sale. $20 donation per basket. Funds go to purchase next year’s baskets.
Summer of Color people meet at the multi-modal/Heritage Park at 8 am to begin taking down plants and setting up the sale area. Sale begins at 9 am and ends at 10 am. Plants not sold during the sale will be discarded.
Fall officially begins Sept 22nd, which has traditionally been the end of the Summer of Color. Banners will be coming down and lights off starting Friday, Sept 18th. RPS will be taking down pennants on or around the same time.
If there are folks with trucks/trailers who want to help take down plants that would be a big help.
Since we weren’t able to do our fundraising events it was suggested that we start a Go Fund Me page to help generate funds for next year. We figured it couldn’t hurt so below is the link to the go-fund-me page. Please share, post, tweet, like, forward, smoke signal or whatever you do nowadays to get the word out to as many people as possible. Just as a reminder it is roughly $10000 for the plants and their maintenance.
If you enjoyed this years gorgeous flower baskets, please hop on over to their GoFundMe for the 2021 season. Like everything else, fundraising has been severely impacted by the pandemic. If you can help out for next year, we can all continue to have a blooming downtown in 2021!
