Gardening is a favorite pastime in Northwest Washington, but each April as residents begin to see the fruits of their labors, a thief also takes notice.
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: May 7, 2013
WASHINGTON — It starts each April with the violation of lilacs. Peonies are the next to fall, then Asiatic lilies. Then, in a painful botanic denouement, hydrangeas meet their demise, yanked at times straight from the roots.
Among Washington fixations, gardening rests somewhere between filibuster reform and the fate of the Nationals. Each spring, bursting stems and shrubs convert the landscape into a Technicolor town worthy of Dr. Seuss, from the most elegant corners of Georgetown to the window boxes of modest row houses downtown. “Gardening,” said David J. Ellis, editor of The American Gardener, “is a passion that unites everyone in D.C.”
But with the growing season comes the flower thief who has vandalized the gardens of Northwest Washington for a decade, literally in the backyard of the police. There have been sightings at flower shops where he is said to peddle his ill-gotten begonias, and mad chases through city streets, petals falling behind him, as he escapes a gardener in pursuit of his lilacs.
The flower thief, as he is widely referred to, also strikes community gardens, ripping branches off trees, plucking blooms and lifting the occasional vegetable from gardeners, many of them retirees who spend the bulk of their free time tending to their plots, often decade after decade until death.
For those who toil in dirt, the elusive thief is a menace whose presence they lament on the Listservs. They wonder, in a city that is among the most garden-crazy in the nation, why the police — long criticized as failing to curb quality-of-life crimes — have failed to end one man’s flower-power grab.
“People say, ‘Get over it,’ ” said Linda Blount Berry, who has a plot in a community garden, where her flowers have been repeatedly stolen. “But how would you feel if every spring you went out to ride your bike and someone had stolen your seat? It’s all relative to what you enjoy. But when you work out here, facing Mother Nature, breaking your back to plant, you deserve to see your peonies.”
To others, the pilfering of peonies is a minor inconvenience in a city with high concentrations of poverty, and they excoriate their neighbors for seeking the prosecution of a man who, according to their unverified accounts, sleeps among the deer of Rock Creek Park.
“Yes, I feel sorry for the defacing of their gardens,” said Elba Arrocha, who also lives in the area. “I feel sorry they feel violated on their property. But look at it this way. If it was an animal, like the otters in the Tidal Basin, which mauled the cherry trees, no one killed them or took them to jail. They found a humane solution for the otters. This is an individual — a person — that may not know the harm he is doing. He may need some financial help and help for his own survival.”
Two residents of Cleveland Park, a neighborhood particularly smacked by the thief, have compiled Listserv complaints and commentary mocking the concerns of gardeners.
The police seem somewhat befuddled. Possibly bored.
“We identified a homeless individual as the one who is seen walking with flowers,” said Cmdr. Michael Reese, who is in charge of the Second District police station here, which sits behind the Newark Community Garden.
“But unless you get someone to say, ‘Hey, I saw this gentleman taking flowers off my porch,’ ” Commander Reese said, the police are unable to pursue an arrest. “You can say you saw him in the area and you surmise he did this stuff,” he said. “But there is a probable cause aspect.”
Residents tell remarkably consistent stories of a man, perhaps in his 50s (he could be older), perhaps with salt-and-pepper hair (it could be black), most certainly disheveled, spotted racing from neighbors’ gardens with his arms stuffed with flowers that they say he took, disappearing into Metro stations. While his pattern has been evident over the past few years, many residents say it stretches back a decade.
Often the thieving comes after long weeks of planting and attending to expensive bushes or blooms, and the news hits hard.
“My peonies were close to full bloom, and my wife called me to say that someone had taken the flowers,” said Eric Langenbacher, a professor in the department of government at Georgetown University who lives in the Burleith neighborhood. “I biked home from work to find all of the blooms nicely cut off. They were not ripped out as one would expect with some random vandal, and there was no damage to the rest of the plant. I biked around in the vicinity and found a little pile of fresh peony leaves in a nearby alley. Something similar had happened the year before with my Asiatic lilies.”
Residents have debated their theories of justice for the thief, ranging from vigilante fantasies involving gardening tools to employment assistance. In a city where crime remains higher than in most cities its size, according to data from the F.B.I., there is little appetite for a severe penalty, but adjudication is craved.
“If he wants flowers, he should be in the community garden,” said Ms. Blount Berry, a landscape architect. “It’s $15 a year, and I’d pay his fees. It’s cheaper than replacing my flowers.”
Some residents fear that with every flower destroyed, part of the history of the city and its neighbors goes, too.
“Gardens are often about heart, and family, and friendship, and individual aesthetic,” Ann Scoffier of Cathedral Heights, said on a Listserv. “A garden has to be taken as a whole. Many people add to the color and variety of their garden year after year, like a painter retouching a beloved painting over time. Flowers to a gardener aren’t expendable things. They are part of a living creation tended over time.”