Near zone

Longmont's front porches do most of the work

Longmont has more usable front porch per house than almost anywhere on this stretch of the Front Range. We deliver uncarved pumpkins to your address and build the display in place, from Old Town brick to the newer streets out east.

See packages and prices Other towns we serve

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

What an Old Town Longmont porch can carry

Old Town runs on brick bungalows, Craftsman cottages and a handful of Victorians, and almost all of them lead with a real porch. You get depth, a solid floor, usually a low balustrade, and three or four steps down to the front walk. That is a stage rather than a shelf. We build the steps first so the display reads from the sidewalk, then run pumpkins along the porch edge and let the rail hold the line. Hay bales sit at the bottom step, widening the base without crowding the door. The mature trees on the numbered avenues keep most of these porches shaded through the afternoon, which holds skins firm well into October. The real constraint is width, because these porches run deeper than they are wide, so we build upward instead of sideways.

Prospect stoops and the newer Longmont streets

Prospect New Town put the porch right up against the sidewalk, with narrow lots, bright paint and garages tucked down the alley. There is very little front yard, so the whole composition has to work at close range and take being looked at from four feet away. We keep those builds tight and layered, with the largest pumpkins low and the palette pulled back so it does not fight the house color. Newer subdivisions in south and east Longmont go the other way, with a covered entry, a wide driveway apron and a lot of open ground. There we widen out, run a line down one side of the walk, and use hay bales to give the display some height where the architecture gives us none. Both approaches are priced the same. Only the shape changes.

Frost dates, chinook gusts and how long a Longmont build lasts

Longmont usually takes its first light frost around the end of September and its first hard freeze somewhere in the middle of October. That is good news for uncarved pumpkins, which are far tougher than cut ones and simply firm up in the cold. The bigger risk is wind. Longmont sits far enough out from the foothills to miss the worst downslope events, but a strong chinook still runs down the St Vrain corridor and finds anything sitting loose on a step. We seat and stake every build rather than stacking it, and if a gust does move something, re-staking is a service we offer. The same goes for an early October snow, which we will come and re-stage. Displays put in during August are built with all of this already assumed.

Who books in Longmont and when the calendar fills

Longmont bookings split fairly evenly between Old Town households who do the porch every year and newer families further out who are doing it for the first time. The repeat customers tend to book in August, often for a build in the last two weeks of that month, so the display stands for the full season. First timers usually call in the second half of September, which is the tightest part of our calendar. The Full package is the common choice here because a Longmont porch plus its steps needs enough volume to fill both, and the two hay bales do real work on a deep porch. Mums are a frequent add-on in Longmont, where front gardens are often still going strong in September and a bare display can look out of place.

Questions from Longmont

Which parts of Longmont do you cover, and what does delivery cost?

We cover every Longmont address, from Old Town through the newer subdivisions on the south and east edges of the city. Longmont sits in our near zone, so delivery adds $45 to the package price. There is no separate charge for the build itself, which is included in every package.

What do the packages cost?

Little is $350 and covers 18 to 20 pumpkins. Full is $695 with 30 to 35 pumpkins and two hay bales. Fairy Tale is $1,200 with 50 to 60 pumpkins and two hay bales, including two jumbos. Longmont delivery adds $45. All pumpkins are whole and uncarved.

A windstorm went through last night. What now?

Tell us and we will come out and re-stake it. Longmont gets sudden gusts through October, and we would rather reset a display than have you doing it in the dark. The same applies after early snow, when we come back and re-stage the build.