Riverside Gardens seeks ideas for fundraiser

To the Editor, 

Riverside Gardens, Inc. is an all-volunteer organization that operates in one of Monticello’s public parks (Riverside Gardens). 

At Riverside Gardens, the city does the mowing, they pay for the electricity for the park, but the gardeners raised the money for the lights and their installation. The city pays the water bill and maintenance of the faucets, etc. The gardeners paid for and installed all the plumbing. The gardeners provide all the hoses, sprinklers, and nozzles. Through generous donations of equipment and dollars and wonderful support of our two fundraisers each year, Riverside Gardens is able to supply our gardeners (our fabulous gardeners) with flowers and equipment to plant and maintain their gardens. Many of the gardeners spend a lot of their own money on special plants that they wish to grow. 

Riverside Gardens raised the money and acquired the house adjacent to the gardens. The house is needed for starting plants for our plant sale, holding meetings, and providing a haven for our gardeners. Riverside Gardens completely takes care of the facility. 

We have always had an emergency fund that was almost completely wiped out two years ago when we lost the two huge maple trees in the back yard. Our big project now is the complete restoration of the back yard, making it beautiful and more accessible to the public. We are guessing it would take in the neighborhood of $30,000 to do it right. So any grand ideas for fundraisers are more than welcome! 

Most of all, Riverside needs more volunteers! We need people who would like to garden, people who would like to learn to garden, people who would like to seed, people who would like to serve on the board, people who want to be cheerleaders. 

For more information, please contact: Judy Tuetken at 319-480-1450, Barb Ahlrichs at 319-480-5817, Dorrean Bohlken at 319-480-1133, Vicki Bone at 319-480-1758, or Judy Skay at 319-431-8818.

Riverside Gardens

Monticello, Iowa