Saturday, July 05, 2008
AS THE WORLD GOES GREEN...
An article in the UK Telegraph talks about the latest crime across the pond. Called "Rose Rage", the culprits slip into the new "outdoor rooms" and abscond with the greenery. Planted today, gone tomorrow has become a trend experienced by more than a few. Garden accessories, such as paving stones, are also disappearing:
Meanwhile, business for Bill Seddon, managing director of garden security company Gardien, is booming.
"Last month, a client in Cheshire called us," he says. "He was selling his house and, within 24 hours of the sign going up, 200 square metres of Yorkstone paving had been nicked from his front garden." With reclaimed Yorkstone selling at £70 per square metre, that's a lucrative morning's work.
Enterprising thieves even appear to be stealing plants to order. The garden designer Bella D'Arcy recently created a community garden for Basildon council, involving a group of teenagers from the local youth club.
"The garden was to be their own and they were really proud of it," she says. "Central to the design were two beautiful Italian cypresses, planted in the centre of a border. But the morning after we planted them they had disappeared. All the other plants had been left, even though they were easier to pull up."
In Hulme, Manchester, the prize-winning community gardener Clive Pyott has become so fed up with the planted troughs, hanging baskets and bamboos he has set around a communal courtyard being spirited away that he has pioneered a secure planting scheme, involving the ingenious use of chicken wire and concrete.
