The great lavender theft mystery

Never had a problem, thankfully

Had you been living in the UK I would say the theft was likely due to France taking the huff at the UK for Brexit and Covid-19 restrictions and stopping UK imports of French lavender. Perhaps there's a shortage where you live

When we moved to our current house we put a lovely big ceramic tub at the side of the front door with a nice dwarf conifer in it. It's a quiet area and we didn't give it a thought. It lasted for about 3 days then it was gone. Never bothered replacing it.

This thread made me poke my head out to check my pot of lavender is still by the front door. It is right below our Ring (video) doorbell in a quite open front garden. I hope this makes it quite safe!

Years ago, we had pansies taken from our front garden. They were in large, but lightweight ornamental pots & they had been fully emptied of flowers, compost & rubble. They even left the pots behind, neatly stacked up. We reported it to police, in case there were other such thefts in the area. Didn't expect police to come round & ask questions though, but had to laugh when one of them asked if we would recognise the pansies again!!!

A few years ago l planted 5 hanging baskets with red,white and blue flowers for the Queens Jubilee. Overnight they were stolen, baskets as well. Also a wall mounted hose pipe was ripped from the wall. I expect they ended up in a carboot sale. My husband wire's them up now.

Our local graveyard is where the flower thieves seem to be heading to. A lot of people have been complaining about the amount of plants that have gone missing, no-one could stoop any lower than that.

Not quite the same thing, but we have a 'Sale Agreed' sign from local estate agents outside our house in the road.

When England won their last match in the Euros, the sign disappeared overnight and was spotted planted in the middle of a nearby roundabout!

I remember reading that a long footpath of old Yorkshire flags was dug up and carted away. As it was during the day locals thought it was council workmen.

Did someone perhaps run short when making lavender bags?

One place I lived in we cemented a Gargoyle to the wall by the front door. Came home a few days later & someone had managed to get through the cement & taken the Gargoyle! So now will not leave anything in the front garden as it will probably be taken! Too many people now think that they have far more right to our property than we do! They want something so check every garden till they find what they want & take it. My Nan would have said she hoped their fingers fall off!

Might try incorporating chopped up Giant Hogweed stems into your compost - they wouldn’t come back again.

I cemented my pots in the front garden so they are still there but I live in a very rough area and neighbours no long put pots at the front, even some shrubs planted in the soil have gone walkies

At our local Tesco, they have very large planters which are dedicated individually to staff members who have lost their lives (some from covid). They are by the doors, and a few months ago some vile person (s) came along when the shop was shut and took plants out of the planters, not all of them, (they were obviously picky, and only took the ones they wanted!) the relatives of the staff these were dedicated to were of course very saddened, as were the friends and colleagues at Tesco. Why do people feel they have the right to just take what they see and fancy for their in garden? Some of the human race these days are absolutely horrible and have no conscience at all.

It’s depressing isn’t it ? The trend seems to be ‘if I haven’t got it, I’ll have yours.’

One Boxing Day, we had a large cordyline in a lovely ceramic pot taken from our front garden.
We guessed that someone was given it as a Chr***mas present!

A house on a corner down the road to me was completely re-vamped a few years ago. It looked lovely, and the final flourish was flowering shrubs and small bushes planted all round it, cutting it off from the pavement. The same evening that the planting was finished every plant, shrub and pot was stolen. It would have been a number of people and some sort of van or pickup involved in this, and, of course, the police weren’t interested.

My DD2 had the same thing happen to her - they were on holiday, so we think it was well planned and they'd have needed a van to uplift the pot.
Years ago, a neighbour had an allotment and went along to dig up some new potatoes for Sunday lunch, only to find someone had got there before him and taken the lot!

These days I regard my front garden as simply somewhere to keep my bins. Apart from keeping it fairly tidy so as not to upset the neighbours, I am not interested in it and certainly wouldn't spend money planting it up nicely as I would expect someone to steal everything.

It’s a very sad fact that there are some thieving scumbags around who think what is yours is theirs. Despicable is a polite way of describing them.

Recently I read of someone’s allotment being raided and although it’s a despicable act at least if it was done by someone who couldn’t afford to buy food I would have had a smidgen of sympathy. (No need to steal food in my town as there are lots of regular free giveaways). However, this is such a sad indictment of people simply taking from others, without there being any actual need. Nobody has any excuse for stealing plants other than greed.

Had pots of flowers taken from the front. Never bothered to replace them, as I knew they’d go again. Also a new doormat - which I should have screwed down.

When we moved into our newly built house we had a red door, my daughter took the casing from our boring old ding-dong doorbell and painted it red to match. She put the casing back on and within 15 minutes it had gone!

And one day, I put a stair bannister out the front, it was due to be put up later that day. I was moving things around, and I tripped over it and moved it. Front door was wide open and the rail half in half out the door. Five minutes was all it took to disappear - and then strangely reappeared two weeks later!?!?!

There are some VERY strange people in the world but I think most of them live around here

Many moons ago our neighbour put a couple of hanging baskets up in a communal area, to pretty it up a bit. A neighbour grabbed one on the way to her car, bold as brass. Apparently she was off to visit her mother on her birthday, and took it as a present.

A lot of people locally have these door bells fitted that film when anyone is coming up the drive. It’s linked to your phone

They have been a great help when neighbours have had things stolen

We are going to get one soon

Makes you lose faith in folks this kind of thing. Yesterday I bought some beautiful plants I'm going to re-pot into a large tub and also a lovely ready made tub. They were all pretty cheap from our local nursery and I'd love to show them off outside the front of the house but I'm just going to keep them for our eyes only in the back as I'm sure they'll end up stolen/in the middle of the road/on top of the car.