UKC

My mother-in-law, a keen gardener, has spent a bit of time over the last week planting some spring flowers and generally tidying up the gardens after the winter.

She's woken up this morning to find that all her new plants have been trampled on and ruined where persons unknown have tried to dig up and steal a well-established blossom tree from her front garden!

No idea how they were going to transport it - the thing is huge - but no-one apparently saw/heard anything last night.

She's been on to the local police, but is obviously worried they might try and come back to finish the job.

Any advice? She has an alarm, but no CCTV. How do you go about anti-thefting a tree!?

Call in Special Branch. 

One of my neighbours has a security light that also plays a recorded warning about CCTV. It's pretty annoying and it won't stop a bold, stupid or determined thief but it might give your mother in law a little peace of mind.

You could bury some steel wire coils or even just a handful of half bricks around the roots when it's filled back in, make digging it out again a nightmare. More legal than landmines and easier to live with than transplanting a wasp-nest into it!

jk

What a Craven thing to do

Can you borrow a dog and put it in the room nearest the garden?  

Does your mum read SunTzu?

'In his retreat, Sun Pin came to a narrow defile, which he calculated that his pursuers would reach after dark. Here he had a tree stripped of its bark, and inscribed upon it the words: "Under this tree shall P`ang Chuan die." Then, as night began to fall, he placed a strong body of archers in ambush near by, with orders to shoot directly they saw a light. Later on, P`ang Chuan arrived at the spot, and noticing the tree, struck a light in order to read what was written on it. His body was immediately riddled by a volley of arrows, and his whole army thrown into confusion.'

One of those motion sensing flood lights might do it. You can run them from a normal 13 socket, so could set one up quite quickly. You can also get wifi enabled security cameras. Not sure where you'd get the archers from though...

With a stolen JCB would be my guess...  

You'd steal a JCB which could dig as well as carry too rather than digging by hand, surely?

If I wanted to steal a tree with a stolen JCB it's what I'd try and organise.