Call it opportunism; call it petty; call it helping yourself.
Call it what you want; it's theft, plain and simple - and it's happening in broad daylight and under cover of darkness all over Richmond.
Stealing produce and gardening materials from community gardens, parks, farms and even backyards appears to be on the up across the city.
Whether it's topsoil, exotic flowers and blueberries from Paulik Park in central Richmond, fruit and vegetables from the Sharing Farm at Terra Nova or strawberries from W&A Farms' U-pick, the thefts are becoming more frequent and brazen.
And the people who volunteer much of their lives keeping the green spaces beautiful or spend the entire year nurturing a special fruit or vegetable have one message - it's not yours, you didn't grow it, so don't take it.
"Every other week I catch people walking around with trowels and shovels, preparing to help themselves to whatever they want," said Gene Zdenek, one of 40 or so Richmond Garden Club volunteers at Paulik Neighbourhood Park, a city-owned six-acre lot between Heather and Ash streets, just north of Blundell Road.
"I have confronted them, but they just pretend they don't speak English and they just hang around until I leave.
"They also come here in their cars and trucks and take top soil and mulch that's just been delivered by the city.
"It's simply not acceptable; we spend hours and hours nurturing things here and people walk in here and take what they want."
Richmond News gardening columnist Deb Brodie, one of the first Paulik Park volunteers, said the problem has been around for many years across the city.
"I tried, without success, to bring some attention to this last year," said Brodie.
"We used to frequently turn up to find great big holes where people had just dug something out from the roots and walked off with the plant.
"A lot of community gardens have signs up, asking people not to take stuff, but I'm not sure if it's working."
Zdenek has also spoken to Ash Street homeowners, whose backyards run parallel to Paulik Park, with many telling stories of seniors scaling garden fences, scissors in hand, to cut off and steal large bags of home-grown blueberries.
A similar fate is being experienced over at the open-planned, community Terra Nova Sharing Farm, where thousands of dollars worth of garlic was stolen last year.
And just last week, a woman had her entire grape crop stolen after bringing it lovingly to fruition all year.
Colin Dring, executive director of the Richmond Food Security Society, said thefts at the Sharing Farm happen at least once a week and added it gets more frequent during a recession.
"The real tragedy is that, if you're a gardener, you spend all year waiting for your crop or plant to come just right, like the woman with the grapes, who was understandably upset," said Dring.
"Education I think is the key. Many people (who're stealing) I think don't realize whom they're affecting, it's just regular people."
Community gardens, Dring said, perhaps need to be designed better to allow more eyes to keep watch in a bid to deter the less brazen daytime thieves.
"Gardeners themselves are having to be more and more imaginative in disguising their favourite plant or crop," added Dring, without giving away the secrets.
Bill Zylmans, owner/operator of W&A Farms, with acreage all over the city, knows all about crop thieves, having been victim to a 5,000-pound potato heist last year.
Zylmans regularly kicks people off his land, whether they're helping themselves to strawberries after closing time or even picking pigweed - popular as a vegetable in certain cultures - from his backyard.
"I say to them, 'excuse me, this is my land,' to which they say, 'oh, we didn't know,'" said Zylmans, who encouraged the City of Richmond to erect 14 signs at certain public access points to farms.
The signs went up this week, asking people to respect farmers and their land.
"The signs are the first step I guess in educating people, many of them are just ignorant. But ignorance is not an excuse.
"At the end of the day, it's all about respect for other people's property and livelihoods - it's not a free-for-all out there.
"And for all (the thieves) know, there could be fertilizer or something on the crops. Farmers, such as myself, use chemicals as little as possible. But when we do, we try to let people know.
"But if they're jumping into fields at the wrong end, how do they know what they're dealing with?"
If you see suspicious activity in farmer's fields or community gardens and parks, call Richmond RCMP at 604 278 1212.
