I am so furious..........................

Came to work this morning, was the last day my intern was working.We got a call from the water crew, someone had destroyed 32 of my planters downtown.several of these tropical ones,they pulled up everything but the palms,(couldn't get those out without a shovel) they threw the plants on the ground and headed for the next one. I about freaked out. Next week the state fair begins, over 1 million people will pass thru town.I wanted all the planters nice....................I spent the day replacing plants and filing police reports.What a great last day for my intern. He is 18 and is a great candidate for my eventual replacement. His passion for tropicals is just starting to flourish. So about one more destroyed planter this year and I'm gonna start removing pots in these areas.

Kyle :-(

Oh, Kyle, that's AWFUL!!! You put so much work into them. Since they were on downtown streets, is it possible that the creeps were caught on camera? Traffic cams, maybe, or businesses. Especially since the morons went down the street, destroying one after another. Surely, they were on camera somewhere along the way!

we figure it was ONE deranged person, they pulled the same few kinds of plants out of every container...........covered a 7 block area.. I can't fathom that NO ONE saw this person in the heart of downtown..

Oh that's awful, Kyle! I hope you and your intern were able to save them. Definitely check to see if it was captured on video.
:( Donna

Kyle-
How absolutely horrible! I can't even imagine how you must have felt when you saw your beautiful work destroyed.
I am so sorry you had to deal with that. I hope they find the person!

Take care ROX

That is so horrible! It always amazes me how awful and mean people can be.

Oh, those planters are (were) so beautiful!

I hope they get whoever destryed them.

Robert.

I know the feeling and it isnt good at all. I had two 6 foot colocasia illustrius pulled out of my beds here at the nursery about a week ago. their is now a gapping hole in the landscape. I had seen a older lady two days earlier rip one of my 3 foot black magics out of the ground and take off in her truck with it. She was lucky I did not get to her in time.

so sorry Kyle. So many kids are just idiots now a day

Was it just a destructive thing? or was someone shopping for plants?
Is there anything we can do to help?
Rj

Rj, they just destroyed the plants, none were really missing.They threw them on the ground right next to the planters.

Is there a bright side? are some of the plants recoverable?
I wish there was something I could do to help.
rj

Kyle I am so sorry. I know the work you had to have put into those. I would help you fix them if I were there. Never ceases to amaze me the meaness of some.

Glad they did not do but a few plants each.

Blessings,
Sandy ^8^

Maybe the deranged person had no beauty in their life and it made them feel better destroying beauty.

What is the world coming to!

it sounds more like some mischievious kids- but deranged or whatever, the person is mad at the world- and if there is a bright side, it would be that they didn't do it to other people. If they do catch the person I sincerely hope that they are requested to help put things back, who knows- mabe they might find some freedom in gardening one day.

Is it possible is wasn't 'somebody' but rather 'something'? My deck containers are recovering from 2 nights of raccoons pilfering in my plants. The plants are left scattered on the deck. They were searching for worms and grubs in the pots. We are having a severe drought here, and the varmints are in search of food.

Oh Kyle, I know how upsetting that must be. I've had small scale damage by animals and it really hurts me, I know how hard you have worked to make the planters beautiful for the public. Hope you find out what happened and hope you can put them back together. I've never had intentional destruction but would get really mad if I did.

I am just so glad they didn't touch my interns garden,he worked hard designing it (almost all by himself) and planting it, he was feeling bad about the other planters, but if his garden got destroyed it could ruin his whole outlook on doing this kind of work. He is only 18 and has a bright future ahead of him.With a little help from me. His name is Andrew, he just left for the season to go back to College.He will be back next summer. Was a tremendous help to me with all the plantings this year.

He did a great job. Maybe he has a future in horticulture.

Brian, I would've been faster LOL Old lady would've been sorry.

Marian, animals don't pull out 10 gal sized plants...:-) I have a hard time lifting some of the tropicals they tore out...so it was definately a human.Probably a wino (we have 100's) or a meth user, meth gives people strange strength.

I don't know, the only varmit I know of that can be that unabashedly mean and heartless is a teenager (or young adult, probably drunk, but young). They seem to be the piece of the population that has such a lack of respect for anything. If the plants had been taken, I would say it could have been just about anyone, but they were not taken just destroyed, that's not careless, that's mean.

How horrible, I wish I was close enough to help you replant everything. I know it will all be fine for the fair week. No one but us DG'ers will ever suspect something happened to the planters.
I hope the police will patrol the area; it is hard to believe no one saw anything.

BTW, Andrew's garden is gorgeous

Kyle...I am amazed you haven't had more of this problem!!! There is such a streak of MEAN in some people...they just can't handle beauty or the success of anything or anyone...makes them feel so must LESS. Too bad you can spray them with something that stains hands so that they would be easily found!!!

I should spray them with poison ivy extract..that would at least give em something else to do..Scratch scratch..

Hmmmmm, you might have a marketable idea there Kyle. LOL

Marion, I have problems with raccoons too. They have torn the plants out of pots then threw the pots off the deck. Strange behavior for animals or man.

Kyle-
Did you lose any really rare plants that we can help replace?
If so, please let us know (here and on the plant trading forum). I am sure other DGers will go out of their way (even more than we normally do!) to help out.
I know I will.

ROX

Rox, thanks for the offer. I keep many plants (spares) for just these kind of situations.We had two visiting guests from Arkansas here when this happened.they work in the public sector with displays too.They acted like ..Oh well..this happens,..I was kinda put off by their attitude.Especially after I sent them home with a carload of tropicals.

I quit putting the really rare plants in displays after the theft last year of some rare crotons I used in a bed, they were 4 ft tall and wide and someone still stole them.All the plants that disappear tend to be rare plants..so leads me to think a collector among us is building a collection. If they would just ask I would give them cuttings.Guess I'm from a bygone time when you could trust people.
:-(

This reminds me of something.
When I was young, there was a time when the city was beautifying the turnpikes by planting evergreen trees along the roads.
But one year many people cut the trees down for Christmas trees and it was so depressing just to see the stumps. But then the City did something sneaky. They sprayed the trees with this horrible smelling stuff. Those who stole trees after that really regretted it! Too bad you can't use that to deter the "collectors"!

ROX

COOL idea!!! There is an additive put in Pepper Spray that shows a bright color when exposed to UV light. Maybe you could make a BIG fuss about spraying in the city and then have the Newspaper make an announcement...that...infers....that..... :).

Or...station the National Guard - shoot on sight.

OH, I didn't say that!

I just don't understand some people these days. Morality has definitely took a downward spiral. I do think drugs and drinking play a major role. Normal thinking just flies right out the window. Then again some people just don't like plants. Strange, but true!

I feel your pain because yesterday the cable guy trampled a huge space in my ee bed. They are not rare, but I really liked them thick and lush. ERRRR, but they are perennial ee's so I will get over it eventually, lol. Still makes me angry though!

I sincerely hope your plants make a full recovery. Maybe you should put up 'monitored by' signs, even if they aren't being monitored. Maybe it will scare them away??

This message was edited Aug 6, 2006 8:56 AM

My DD had this problem in Chicago too, only it was an older woman and she stole from my DD and the parks.

Hap

dear kyle
the planters are so beautiful.

Someone has to have seen the perps.

A few years ago, in a little town called "Holland" on the
michigan shoreline, their one claim to fame and that which
keeps the town going and alive for the rest of the years, is their
famous "Tulip Festival". Hundreds of thousands of tulips planted
and cared for by everyone in that little town.

All it took was for some moronic teenage idiots to drive their
car through the tulip fields with their doors open and behead
about 20,000 tulips. I dont know if they found out who it was,
I surely do. And, make them work to care for the tulips as
community service.

I sure hope your vandals come to their shame.
Regards,
sheri

Those are some sweet looking displays!!
Hope they all recovered for you.

We had the Christmas Tree problem too.
It was our Blue Spruces they were after.
They came in w/ chain saws to harvest.
Sneak in rip one off and gone.
The next year we drove in steel farm posts then planted w/ them along the trunks.
Middle of the night chain saw starts...we hear a scream.....off goes the truck....next morning we found a broken blade....and red splatters in the snow...........
Strangly we never lost another tree.........lol

Ric

A few years ago they planted some christmas tree like pines and spruces down our highways. They had a huge problem with them getting chopped down right around christmas time. They lost probably hundereds or more the first year. The next year they lost maybe a hand full. I talked to a friend who worked for the road it seems they had started spraying the trees with skunk urine and other types of very strong animal urine.

I am sure someone had a very smelly christmas that year.

Oh Kyle, what a real shame. I would just die if that happened to me. So unfair. I am so sorry they did this to you. All your hard, hard work. And if you were to do something that may hurt the thiefs the next time they stole them, I bet they would sue the city and win! Things get more and and more upside down the older I get.

I like to call it the de-evolution of humanity.

Kyle...have you gone to the newspapers and gotten an article written about it...the more sympathy you can conjur up...the more protective the general pop. might be about their plantings!!!! and YOU.

I am sorry some one destroyed all your hard work. Your planters were and will be beautiful.

I second Aloha's last comment! It takes a community.

Robert.