Thieves, vandals wreak havoc on Richmond community garden

RICHMOND (NEWS 1130) – Picked clean and ripped out – a community garden in Richmond is dealing with a string of thefts and vandalism, and gardeners don’t know how to stop them.

While theft of a couple berries or a ripe tomato is nothing out of the ordinary for community gardens, what’s happening at the Garratt Wellness Centre garden is something else. Several times over the past three weeks, plants have been picked clean or ripped out entirely.

Richmond Food Security Society’s Sarina Clay-Smith says it hurts to see people’s hard work destroyed.

“Thefts are one thing, you can think maybe that person needed the plant or fruit more than you did, but when it’s taking the whole plant out and really damaging the plant for future produce, that’s another thing,” she says, adding several gardeners are heartbroken.

“It’s very troubling for them, who have spent all this time cultivating, carefully planning their garden to have it all ripped up.”

And the vandals aren’t just stealing produce when they rip up the plants.

“Sometimes they were leaving them there, so people could see that they weren’t really stealing them to use them, they were just wanting to destroy the garden,” Clay-Smith says.

Community gardens on public land can’t put up fences or put up security cameras, so she says she isn’t sure how they’ll prevent this from happening again in the future.