News Release

Adopt-a-Planter 2011

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During the Sept. 13 Common Council meeting Mayor Witte handed out awards to participants in the Adopt-A-Planter North Union Street merchants were first asked to adopt the planters and then the public and organizations were offered the remaining planters. Members of the Portville Garden Club acted as judges.

Officials are considering future planning efforts to undertake a 2012 project for next summer.

On September 9 in her office Mayor Linda Witte awarded prizes and certificates to some of the participants. She provided the Common Council with an overview of the project and presented certificates to the remainder of the project participants during Tuesday night’s Council meeting. The contest was held to bring attention to the downtown with volunteer container plantings in the city-owned 23 redwood planters that are in place along N. Union Street.

Mayor Witte provided the participating merchants with stickers to place on the windows of their businesses. Please take note when you are shopping downtown and remember to patronize these dedicated business folk.

Shown here are: (from left) first prize-winners Beth and Dave Prince for Databranch (Planter #8); third prize-winner Theresa Raftus for Community Bank (Planter #9); Raegan Kenney, a seventh-grader and member of the second-prize winning team, “M&M” (Planter #22); Marcia Kelly, M&M team member; Sue Stevens, Adopt-A-Planter coordinator; Maureen Sheahan, M&M Team Member; Alice Frost, Portville Garden Club member and Adopt-A-Planter judge; and Mayor Linda Witte.

Other contestants were as follows: Uptown Florist, Five Star Bank, Olean Child Day Care, Olean Medical Group, BOCES, OBI, Peppermill, Little Chicago, Greater Olean Area Chamber of Commerce, McCarthy’s Emporium, On Location Photography, Beef ‘N Barrel, Helen Johnson, Julie Barnes and Americorps, Jamestown Community College, Tom and Joey Enright. Mayor Witte, aided by City Assessor Nancy Champlin and other city employees, adopted the planters #1 and 3 in front of the Post Office.

Portville Garden Club member Sue Stevens coordinated the Adopt-A-Planter effort after receiving a suggestion from Laurie McCarthy of McCarthy’s Emporium. Contestants were responsible for the costs and labor of planting, fertilizing, weeding, etc. Merchants were invited first to adopt planters and then the public was invited to claim remaining planters for caretaking over the summer. Several merchants placed pots and planters outside their storefronts and did not compete in the contest, but contributed some nice greenery anyway.

Nan Miller, a Cornell Cooperative Extension Master Gardener from Salamanca, sent all the contestants very detailed information for container plantings in the extreme urban setting for these planters. Planting began in earnest around Memorial Day. The Judges from the Portville Garden Club were Alice Frost and Shirley Longbotham, Carol and Tony Gallo, and Ruth DeYoe visited six times between June 29 and August 29 in teams of two. They scored the planters from 1 to 10 and came up with their own award categories. City Forester Sue Cooper, and her husband, Wayne Cooper, a retired forester, to design and place labels for each planter. These were purchased from SUBCON by the city. Donations for prizes were noted: pruning shears from Worth W. Smith, a $50 gift certificate from Pleasant Valley Greenhouse. The Mayor took the second-place team to lunch at the Beef ‘N Barrel.