Urban Gardening

New York Times Photo.

From "Please Don't Pick the Roses. Let the Chain Alone, Too." SEE those fine rose bushes on the left side of the first picture? They recently graced the modest garden at the front of an Upper West Side brownstone co-op for a few weeks. In that short time, they sprouted quickly, brightening the co-op's entrance with nascent red and orange blooms - and the promise of many more for years to come.

Good thing the picture was taken. The roses were stolen a day or two later. Not at night. Not in predawn darkness. Between 4 and 5 p.m. On a Saturday. They were uprooted and taken; the trellises were thrown willy-nilly - and themselves disappeared later.

Plant theft is nothing new. Just a week before someone snatched the roses, three hosta plants at the back of this very same garden were swiped....

The beauty of this park-side street, where a neighborhood association each year plants impatiens next to the trees that line the road, no doubt draws attention. This comes with a price.
In an e-mail message about the rose caper, a longtime resident of the co-op, Jonathan Baker, noted that a previous resident "had the privet bushes chained by their trunks to the iron fence, so if we want to plant anything substantial in the future, the bushes will have to be conspicuously chained in the same fashion until they gain some size in a couple of years."