Who is stealing plants from Queen Elizabeth Park?

It appears someone with a green thumb and sticky fingers has been stealing plants from Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Park.

“It’s so disappointing when people just decide that they can just go there and pull something out of the ground,” Vancouver Director of Parks Howard Normann said.

In total, about 12 plants have been stolen from the rose garden and other areas of the park.

In their place, staff gardeners have put up signs that read, “I was stolen by a plant thief.”

The park board suspects the thefts happened at night.

“So when someone just comes and takes thing senselessly, we don’t have a resource just to go and buy unlimited amounts of plants,” Normann said. “It just doesn’t work that way.”

The park board says the issue is becoming a perennial problem. They aren’t thinking about fencing off the flowers from the public, but will be increasing patrols to deter thieves.

“It’s not acceptable, in case someone was confused, which can happen, and thought that that was available to them,” park visitor Christine Bickson said. “Maybe we could emphasize that it’s not.”