Garden Thief

[muffinmon]

Comments

[kharmii]

That is so weird! People are so hard-up that they feel the need to steal plants right out of the dirt? I remember reading somewhere that parks and public places in many areas were having a problem with people coming in the middle of the night and stealing the plants out of the decorative landscaping. This is a first though.

The worst I've had is people coming by and snapping the tops off of my tulips. I lost about 1/3 of them this year. I'm so glad I'm moving, and my next place will have a fence. This neighborhood isn't bad, but a lot of grade school kids are irreverent and think nothing of throwing fast food garbage in peoples' yards and damaging the landscaping.

[virginiadear]

"This neighborhood isn't bad, but a lot of grade school kids are irreverent and think nothing of throwing fast food garbage in peoples' yards and damaging the landscaping. "

I've been dealing with theft of produce (and damage to the kitchen garden enclosure) as well as trash being tossed onto the front garden/landscaping which, I have to admit, isn't anything BHG or House Beautiful photo-worthy, but I do work at keeping it tidy. And this isn't being done by kids, so much, as by the drunks who are wandering from the tavern at the end of the block, where my one block-long street "T's" with a main road, to the parking lot behind the arts center which is more or less across the street from my house.
Very annoying.
No actual damage from the trash, yet, although it ticks me off to have to police the front yard twice a day---I have to remind myself that no one held a loaded and cocked pistol to my head and forced me to buy this property, y'know? And one morning I found a never opened beer can (Coors, in case anyone's curious) which I

[kharmii]

Oh, I almost forgot...three years ago, I had two small Easter Island head lawn ornaments in my front garden. When I came back from a two week vacation, they were gone

[rangerharkness]

I totally feel for you. Some bastard a few weeks ago nicked a Dahlia potplant (which was about to flower), a small cermaic bird and then a couple of weeks later someone takes my garden/patio hose. and add to the heartache I have a begonia in front yard small but has some buds ready to open. Last time I had a flower someone broke off the bud, branch and all. I just got a flower a day or two ago and the flower has once again come away from the plant.
God people just piss me off.

[aminallauren]

Are you in Philly? Because it's happening here, too to people. Usually front window/stoop planters.

[cowgirl524]

Holy crap that is awful!! I never thought to fear for my plants, and I live in the 'ghetto' part of my small town. It's all college students and crack heads (although not all the college kids are bad, plenty are pretty awful), and we have been told the cops have been paid off to ignore all the drug traffic. I'm all about locking my doors and vehicles, keeping the tool shed locked, not leaving anything out on the porch or anything, but it never occurred to me that someone might steal my plants!!! But my crack head neighbors are scared of my pit bulls because pit bulls = vicious dog fighting animals (even though mine will drown you in drool and kisses, and they're both freaked out by cats, such tough dogs! :-P), so maybe that's why. Do you happen to have a dog that lets you know when someone's outside? Mine bark like they're going to rip the face off of people walking across the street. So sorry you're having to deal with such crap!

[rhysande]

I feel for you. We have a large, shady yard that backs onto a bike path. People like to come into our yard and and wander through the gardens. We've had to go out and speak to a fair number of people who thought they could use our garden as a dog park, our garden ornaments as footballs, our garden paths as a trail for their dirt bikes and atvs and our flowers as a free cutting garden. A couple years ago someone came into our yard and cut down one of our 20' tall fir trees, probably for use as their Christmas tree. Last summer I had about 40 plants, (some of which were rare cultivars and some of which were several years old) disappear from my back yard one weekend when my husband and I were out of town. I suppose they thought I wouldn't notice, since they took care to not take too many plants out of one bed. Ha! Like I wouldn't notice a 3' diameter hole in the ground where my Hosta 'Big Daddy' used to be!

I don't know what kind of mentality it takes to something like that. I really can't wrap my head around it.

[low_delta]

WTF!

Sounds like you need some serious fencing.

[rhysande]

We're working on it. We've got a hedge of 6' tall lilacs along most of the back already, we just need to fill in the last 30' or so of the property line and put in a couple gates.