Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
After community gardens were recently plundered in New York City, thieves in Indianapolis have also made their mark, equipped with shovels and plastic bags and brazenly entering gardens in broad daylight to carry away produce. This is the second year in a row that one community garden has been ripped-off in the city. An article in The Star gives us the details:
After a summer of battling bugs, pulling weeds and digging dirt in the stifling hot weather, gardeners of the Grassroots Community Farm were nearly in tears over the latest insult.
They struggled several times last week for answers to an unexpected problem at their three-acre plot near 38th Street and Lafayette Road.
Who would steal their hard-won tomatoes right off the vine? Who cut the collard greens and swiped their sweet potatoes?
Apparently, the gardeners decided, it wasn’t deer from nearby Eagle Creek Park. Rather, it was the work of vegetable thieves who came equipped with shovels and plastic bags.
Their plot isn’t the only community garden in the city to suffer thefts and vandalism this summer.
The Grassroots gardeners are all immigrants or refugees…
…Indianapolis is not alone with stories of garden thievery. The New York Times reported recently that veggie thefts this summer that have disheartened gardeners in New York’s network of more than 700 community plots…
…”Thefts and vandalism are huge,” declared Kay Crimm of Grow Me gardens.
Last year, her group had a three-acre site near 46th Street and Arlington Avenue. It was plundered so badly that the gardeners left the site and moved to a plot at 46th Street and Post Road, she said, but it has “been ripped up, too.”
The garden coordinators said veggie thieves are brazen, making their raids both at night and in broad daylight.
Beltran-Figueroa said “private property” signs did not stop the thefts on at least two days in the past week… Read more here
