Late-Night Thieves Ransack 2 Reston Community Gardens

RESTON, VA — Late-night thieves stole hundreds of dollars worth of plants from two community garden plots last week in Hunters Woods Park in Reston. A surveillance camera captured images of two individuals removing plants from around 4 a.m. to 5 a.m.

"This has been happening since last year, where a team of people obviously come into the garden plot," said Molly O'Boyle, a government contract employee who volunteers as the garden plot coordinator for the Reston Association. "Now we have a 10-foot chain-link fence and a padlock gate, and they come in and they go, and they steal plants."

Over the two years since the thefts have occurred, gardeners who pay an annual fee to RA to work the community plots, have lost thousands of dollars in plants, according to O'Boyle.

"Last year, we had eight lavender plants, blueberry bushes, raspberry bushes, strawberry plants, 30 onions were pulled out of the ground. Six full-sized basil plants are gone," she said.

An 87-year-old woman, who has been working in the community gardens for 30 years, spent an entire day last week installing plants that she'd raised from seeds.

"They took every single one," O'Boyle said. "They've taken her bowl that she used to move things around the garden — a huge metal bowl. They just dumped the stuff out and took the bowl."

The thieves have destroyed gardens, dug holes, and stolen tools as well. O'Boyle said one gardener found the wooden frame around his garden had been unscrewed, so that it could be removed during a future late-night visit.

Small statues and gnomes decorating a fairy garden created by Angie Callaghan's 4-year-old daughter were not even safe from the thieves.

"My daughter has been gardening with me since she was a year old and we had been collecting these items and created a fairy garden," Callaghan said. "It was stolen in June 2020, and when the kind gardeners put some fairies, houses, and gnomes back for us, those were stolen in early August."

Out of frustration, the gardeners have turned repeatedly to RA and the Fairfax County Police Department for help.

Mike McNamara, RA's director of maintenance and natural resources, said a new 10-foot fence was installed to replace the old 4-foot fence around the gardens, and new combination locks to keep the gates closed were added.

The gardeners also asked for the installation of a surveillance camera and floodlights with motion detectors, neither of which RA did.

"Some gardeners did put up some on their own, small motion-detection cameras, which we don't have a problem with," McNamara said. "If we put the cameras up, we're kind of under the assumption of liability that it's monitored and it's safe and it's always being watched, which it would not be."

Although RA did install lights with motion detectors, they were not the requested flood lights. McNamara said RA opted for lights that they knew would pass the Reston Design Review Board.

"Lighting is obviously a sensitive subject here in Reston," he said. "Where you put lights, how you put them, when they're going to come on, what time, how long they're going to stay on, because there is some residential housing around that area. We didn't want major, glaring lights to go on and stay on all night."

Even with the new fencing, locks, lights, and gardener-provided camera, thieves were still able to access the gardens last week and make off with a bounty of plants.

O'Boyle suggested that RA install a surveillance camera in the parking lot adjacent to the gardens so license plate numbers could be obtained.

McNamara said installing a camera in the parking lot would create greater liability for RA, as well as incur additional costs.

"I have to get power out there," he said. "It's an unprotected camera. It's around the middle of nowhere."

RA does have security cameras around its recreational vehicle storage yard, but those are tied to the security of the building and the property values of the vehicles being stored there.

In future, McNamara said RA would continue to work with the gardeners on security and encourage them to use the non-emergency police number to report the thefts.

Twenty-one separate thefts were reported last year from the gardens at 2501 Reston Parkway near Hunters Woods, according to a police spokesman.

"Our report management system requires that each victim of a crime has their own case assigned to them," the spokesman said, in an email. "This means the 21 reported thefts reflect the number of victims, where the number of thefts from that location is almost half that. Many of these thefts occurred on the same day. This year, there have been four reported thefts from that location; two of which appeared to have occurred on the same day."

In the aftermath of last year's reported plant thefts, Reston District Police Station’s Crime Prevention officer met with the RA manager to discuss Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.

"We would encourage community members to reach out to their local district station to find out more," the police spokesman said. "As always, we would also encourage community members to report any suspicious activity in their community."

When the thefts began last year, O'Boyle filed a police report for both of the gardens, but she was told the individual gardeners who were victims of the thefts had to file their own reports.

Most of the thefts seem to occur between May and July, according to police. Anyone apprehended stealing plants could face a range of charges, including trespassing, larceny, and larceny with the intent to distribute.

The gardeners have become more cautious about anyone who drives up to the gardens, according to O'Boyle. Most of them believe the thieves are landscapers, grabbing material for an upcoming job.

"It made people a little anxious being there by themselves last year, thinking, 'Is this somebody?' If it's a van we don't recognize or a car or people walk by, is this someone scouting out the place?" she said.

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