Mark Anderson wrote:
In article says...
There is a bit in an article in Gardens West June 2004 (a Canadian
gardening magazine) about a woman who lost all her alley side
plantings
to a neighbor a few blocks away. She followed the tracks down the
alley
and found all her plants had been sold in a yard sale. She only
plants
in the front now.
I installed planters in my alley where the garbage cans reside.
These
are hand made wood lined milk crate containers which I put on
shelves.
At first the garbage men thought they were garbage and I luckily
caught
them trying to toss them even though they were full of dirt. I then
bolted the crates to the shelves which were bolted to the wall. A
few
days later I caught some guy digging out pineapple sage plants I had
planted there. What he was going to do with these I have no idea
since
they aren't really worth much but the guy was pretty much an idiot.
I
then had to write a sign asking people not to take the plants and so
far
that has worked. Later in the summer the sign gets covered up by
morning
glory vines and the plants are so well established no one touches
them.
One of my neighbors down the street planted a bunch of evergreen
bushes
in these fancy concrete containers placed in front of her house next
to
the sidewalk. Within the first week someone stole two of them. She
then
had to place a bike lock cable looped around the trunk to keep people
from stealing the rest of them.
This reminds me of some advice I once heard on one of those gardening
tv shows for curbside planters. They placed a steel bar vertically
through a hole in the bottom of the planter, and buried it into the
soil underneath. I seem to recall there were steel bars or cross bars
on either end as well.
Dora