To the editor:

The Downtown Lewistown Adopt-a-Planter Program is finishing its fifth summer growing season. Compared to last year’s drought, it’s been an excellent year for gardening!

Several downtown sponsors have voluntarily swapped their summer annuals for chrysanthemums, ornamental kale, grasses, and pumpkins and soon there will be evergreens and other tough plants to endure the long winter months.

Planter sponsors are not required to maintain their planters all winter, but an increasing number of them choose to do so, anyway.

A big thank you to all of the Adopt-a-Planter sponsors for their time, talent and financial contributions to Downtown Lewistown: Honey Creek Bill & Beak, Jami and Elysia Glick, Jim’s Scrap Metals, Lisa Knudson, Roxanne Carstetter, Matthew P. Conrad, CPA LLC and Miss Stephanie’s School of Dance, Mifflin County Conservation District, Wray’s Landscaping, Zion Hair Salon, Juniata Valley Bank, River Mountain Landscaping, Mifflin County Children and; Youth Services, Penn State Master Gardeners of the Juniata Valley, DNA Blossoms, Budget Blinds of Happy Valley, The Square Cafe & Bakery, Lewistown Pharmacy, Juniata River Valley Chamber and Visitors Bureau, Laskaris, Lewistown Printworks, United Way of Mifflin-Juniata, KC’s Gifts, Jewelry & Awards, Giant of Lewistown, Sacred Heart Parish and School, Bushmen Landscape Professionals, and Barger’s Landscaping.

I’ve awarded Jim Tunall Awards to several deserving businesses and individuals who have designed and maintained their planters well.

If you would like to support the Adopt-a-Planter Program, there are a few things you can do: 1) Visit the website at www.lewistownplanters.com to fill out a sponsor application, 2) Support the local businesses and organizations that have sponsored planters, or 3) Contact me if you have any plant material that we could use on Market Street for the winter, such as evergreens, corkscrew willow, red twig dogwood, white birch, hawthorn berries, holly, etc. There are 50 planters, and we’d like to fill as many of them as possible. Thank you!

Sara Buffington

Downtown Lewistown

Adopt-a-Planter Program