The Station House Gallery is giving up all hope of beautifying the old Station House with flowers this year.
For the fourth year in a row, on Friday, May 27 thieves stole the hanging baskets of flowers gracing the Station House Gallery building.
This time brazen thieves stole the flowers while gallery manager Diane Toop was inside the building working.
“They were here when I arrived at work on Friday and gone when I left at 5 p.m.,” Toop says. “So someone pulled up outside the gallery, put them into their vehicle and drove off in broad daylight with our planters. We also had two wagon wheels outside and now there is only one.”
Because of these brazen thefts, Toop says the gallery won’t have hanging baskets this summer.
“I have planted them and was ready to put them up but we have been ripped off four years in a row and don’t want to lose the cedar baskets which are very expensive to replace,” Toop says. “We are hoping that if we are moved out of this location — somewhere more visible — this type of theft and vandalism will lessen. I don’t think the museum has this problem.”
She says the planters taken this time were two terra cotta-coloured, 18-inch diameter pots filled with pansies and evening stock.
“They go beside the bench that is outside the building that is in Memory of Quint and Liz Robertson which makes it even sadder,” Toop says.
“So, we give up. We have always worked hard to make the gallery look pretty in the summer but we can’t keep replacing the pots and flowers.”