Home » Plants & Animals » Virtual Gardening » Thieves in the Garden

Thieves in the Garden

© Carol Wallace

John Adney of Marion, Iowa was not too surprised to look out his window one evening to see a very tall banana tree precipitously departing his garden.

"I'd noticed that a few perennials were missing from my border. I knew I couldn't blame deer, squirrels or rabbits, so assumed it was some kind of human skunk. I kept watch. One evening, just after dark, this senior thief stopped at my garden (it was along a sidewalk in front of the house), looked all directions to see if anyone was looking and started to pull an 8-foot-tall banana tree out of the ground (the tree summered in our Iowa garden). I ran out of the house just as she was pushing the tree into her car. She got in and sped away."

Gadney was lucky enough to get her license number and have the woman apprehended - but his neighbors, who had also been victims of garden theft, were not so fortunate, since the burglaries could not be traced directly to the Great Banana Tree Thief.

Garden theft is not something peculiar to Iowa. Since gardening has become one of the great national pasttimes, garden theft has also been on the rise. It's not bad enough that we gardeners must guard against theft by slugs, chipmunks, groundhogs and raccoons - now we have to worry about 2-footed marauders!

Public and Private Garden Thefts
Plants disappear from both public and private gardens with alarming frequency. A volunteer at the Buffalo and Erie Botanic Gardens says the problem there is severe.

"Whenever we acquire a new specimen (and we've really been active recently), it's necessary to actually CHAIN the plant to the ground, under the mulch. That is, spikes are driven in around the plant, chains and locks are put in place, and mulch is put over top. It became obvious that we needed to resort to extreme measures when some a**hole stole an 8 foot tall Stewartia. Yep, you read that right. Then Japanese Maples were yanked out. The list goes on. "

Cornell Plantations in Ithaca, New York reported the theft of a dozen large yuccas and six rhododendrons - two of which were irreplaceable.

One town reports a rash of thefts - all ferns. Another has high casualties for container gardens. Trees are stolen from new subdivisions almost before the landscapers' trucks are gone. I've read reports of daylily hybridizers having valuable new introductions stolen right out of the field.

The copyright of the article Thieves in the Garden in Virtual Gardening is owned by . Permission to republish Thieves in the Garden in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.