A blooming garden was pointlessly destroyed by passersby.
These Ohio homeowners spent several years transforming their front yard into a beautiful native pollinator garden, only to have it vandalized by a group of kids. The couple shared the security footage to r/NativePlantGardening and asked for advice on how to proceed.
"Unfortunately, a few days ago a group of teenagers vandalized the garden," the original poster wrote. "They trampled beds, pulled up plants, broke our young black gum tree in half, and one even stepped onto our porch. … How do you protect a native garden in public-facing spaces? How do you emotionally recover when your labor of love gets destroyed?"
To some people, this act of vandalism may seem like no big deal — it's just dirt and plants. But this couple spent time and money creating a pollinator paradise, so it's no surprise that its destruction is disheartening.
It's not just a loss for the couple; it's also a loss for the neighborhood. The OP mentioned that "strangers have stopped to thank us for making the street feel more alive."
This yard is a unique beauty, but native plant gardens offer more than aesthetic appeal. They are much better for the environment than traditional grass lawns. While traditional lawns are ecological dead zones, native lawns are extremely biodiverse and provide shelter for local wildlife and support for pollinators.
Rewilding your yard can also save you time and money. Once established, native lawns are fairly low maintenance and require less mowing, watering, and weeding than traditional lawns. You don't need to go all out to enjoy the benefits of native plants, either. A simple switch to a native grass, such as clover or buffalo, is a great place to start.
Redditors expressed their sympathy and suggested ways to prevent such destruction from happening again.
"I'm sorry this happened," one commenter wrote. "Remember that the vast majority of passers by enjoyed your plantings, these kids are rare outliers. It looks like they didn't put all that much effort into it and it was not pre-planned. A short picket fence might have stopped them, or maybe a sign that the location is under video surveillance."
"Looks like an opportunistic vandalism, they didn't really attack anything deeper in the bed. Maybe a fence on the sidewalk-facing side would serve as a psychological barrier," another user suggested.
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