Boulder County

Autumn on a Boulder porch, built to hold through chinook season

We bring the pumpkins to your door and build the display on your porch, uncarved and whole, in a shape that suits your house. Boulder gets hard sun, wind and early snow in the same week, so we build for all three.

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A Colorado porch pumpkin display running the length of a front walk near Boulder.

Victorian porches and mid-century stoops need different builds

Boulder's porches are not one thing. The Victorian and Queen Anne houses on Mapleton Hill and in Whittier have deep covered porches with a railing, a run of steps and a hard shadow line, so the display works best banked against the balustrade and pushed out onto the top two treads where the light reaches. Table Mesa, Martin Acres and Frasier Meadows are mostly low mid-century ranches with a slab stoop and no depth at all, so the arrangement runs sideways along the front bed instead of stacking upward. Newer north Boulder builds tend to have a narrow entry court and a wide garage face, which means we usually split the display, a main group at the door and a smaller run at the driveway edge. We look at the house first and size the group to the architecture.

The wind off the Flatirons decides the shape

West of Broadway the wind comes down off the Flatirons rather than across the plains, and the season's first downslope events can arrive in October, fast and dry and from an odd angle. A pumpkin sitting loose on a painted porch board will move. Anything light, including a straw corner or a stem heavy gourd on a step edge, will move further. So we set the heavy fruit low and on the windward side, we key the group into the step risers and railing posts rather than balancing it, and we stake bales rather than resting them. On the most exposed sites, the blocks that back straight onto open space, we build lower and wider on purpose. If a chinook does rearrange things, tell us and we come back out and re-stake the whole display.

Bears and deer are part of the plan on the west side

In the neighborhoods that back onto the foothills, bears are still feeding hard through September and October, and a porch full of fruit is exactly the kind of thing they investigate. Deer are just as likely and far more frequent. That is not a reason to skip the display, it is a reason to build it differently. Near the trailheads and along the west edge of town we keep the fruit tight to the house and off the open lawn, and away from a low step where a deer can browse standing still. We put the harder skinned varieties in the reachable positions and the show pumpkins where a wall backs them. If something does get chewed, that is Boulder, and we can come out and re-stage the group so the gap does not show.

Boulder porches get looked at, and mostly on foot

The older grid blocks north and east of downtown are walkable, so your display is seen at dog walking pace by people who live four doors away, not at thirty miles an hour through a windshield. Autumn is also when the town fills up. Home football weekends bring parents in, and the leaf turn along the creek keeps people out on foot right through October. A lot of our Boulder bookings are pinned to a date, a parents' visit, a birthday, a first weekend home from a term away, so we ask what the date is and build so it looks its best that morning. After that it stays put for the rest of the season. It is yours to keep, and we do not come back to take it away.

Questions from Boulder

Can you build at a house with steep steps and no driveway parking?

Yes. A lot of the older Boulder blocks are like that. We carry in from the nearest legal spot on the street, and the number of steps does not change anything. Tell us if the block is permit parking or if there is an alley that works better, and we will plan around it.

What are the three packages and which one suits a Boulder city lot?

Little is $350 for 18 to 20 pumpkins, Full is $695 for 30 to 35 plus two hay bales, and Fairy Tale is $1,200 for 50 to 60 including two jumbos and two bales. On a narrow Whittier or Mapleton frontage, Full is usually the ceiling before it looks crowded.

September snow is not unusual here. What happens to the display?

Wet snow flattens the straw and shifts the smaller fruit, and it usually melts off within a day or two at this elevation. Once it clears, message us and we will come and re-stage the arrangement. The pumpkins are fine. Cold keeps them firmer for longer than a warm October does.