Open letter requesting your support
Dear Friends of Lewes,
For nearly 20 years, Lewes in Bloom has helped make living, and visiting Lewes, a delightfully visual and pleasurable experience with more than 20,000 tulips blossoming each spring to over 6500 annuals planted thereafter in more than 20 locations in and around our historic town. LIB is the winner of five prestigious national and international awards for beautification. Our all-volunteer organization of over 280 members is the core of our success! They give over 10,000 volunteer hours each year in planting and maintaining these flowers for everyone’s enjoyment.
Over time, our quiet work has inspired scores of Lewes homeowners to create their own beautiful gardens, resulting in one of the loveliest, most welcoming cities on the East Coast. Indeed, Lewes is on many national lists as one of the top small cities in America.
We do all this with a modest budget which goes toward the purchase of bulbs and flowers, maintaining our gardens and other beautification projects. This year, due to the Covid-19 crisis, our business and municipal sponsorships are down considerably. As a result of this economic predicament, Lewes in bloom is facing a significant deficit and the possibility that we may not be able to continue our important work in the coming year.
That’s why for the first time in our long history we are reaching out to you, our friends and neighbors, with an appeal for help. Our goal is to raise $50,000 to offset current losses and to better position us to prepare for 2021.
Won’t you please help us by considering a tax-deductible gift of any amount? You can help now by CLICKING ON THIS LINK to go to our Donation Page. Together, we can ensure Lewes will continue to blossom and bloom for another year.
With kind regards,
Sue Crawford, Co-chair Dianne Stevens, Co-Chair Warren Golde, Founder
Click anywhere on the picture below to start our video
The Large Tulip Scale in front of Citizens Bank on 2nd Street will track our progress toward our goal. Please help to make it happen.
Bucks for Blooms thermometer is showing progress – 8/5/2020 – we are over 25% toward our goal – THANK YOU!
Thank You Patrons!
We have had a very unprecedented planting season to say the least. To recap: We had to cut back on our plant orders because of funding, two of our new planters on 2nd Street were run over by a truck…literally, and we had to revise the way we do the business of planting our gardens and planters. The World came down with a virus! And it has rocked ours. We couldn’t ask for an” ALL HANDS” event like in the past for our larger gardens. We had to ask a lot of our patrons to pitch in. We needed to” schedule work shifts” in very small groups. Patrons who were comfortable working under state guidelines of wearing a mask and social distancing, showed up to plant. This was not an easy task!
Many of you came out to help…not only in your assigned gardens, but in many of LIB’s other gardens. Those who could not come out supported the efforts in other ways! And we hope to see you all very soon.
So many of us have received thanks from locals and tourists for being in the gardens planting…saying they had hoped LIB would be planting under the current conditions… and how much they have enjoyed the flowers over the years!
So, as we wind down this year’s planting season, and head toward maintaining our sites, we shout out a big thank you, dear patrons. You are the best!
Take a few minutes to tour LIB gardens and see the beautiful results of our collective work.
Ellen McCathran, Horticulture