Raiders destroy children’s allotment

Photo: Tony Miller

DEVASTATED . . . the Garden Gang from St Thomas’s School at the allotments. Teacher Karen Jakeman, back left, and parent Amirah Khan, back right, with children including, front from left, Jake Hacking, Frankie Birch and Heidi Verity.

DEVASTATED youngsters are hoping thugs are caught red-handed after trashing their allotment.

Raiders broke into the shed on the Phillimore Street Allotments, in Lees — where children from St Thomas Leesfield Primary School tend a patch — and stole tools and vandalised equipment.

Teacher Karen Jakeman, who runs the school’s Garden Gang, said the act was hard to comprehend, especially for youngsters who spend hours growing vegetables and flowers and for the whole school, which treats the allotment as an outdoor classroom.

“They took tools, buckets and trugs, but worst of all there were bags with cups, juice, biscuits and seeds in them, obviously for the children, and they just emptied them out everywhere,” said Karen.

“They also threw stuff in the stream, I mean what is the point of that? You can see why people steal things, but that was just utterly pointless and very difficult for the children to understand.

“I haven’t even been able to break it to some of the children yet but the ones who do know are really angry and just want to know why.”

The misery is also being felt by other growersL the allotments have suffered a spate of break-ins over recent weeks and hundreds of pounds worth of equipment stolen. During the latest incident every shed across all 16 plots was burgled.

Phillimore Street Allotments secretary Diane Thompson says there have been six break-ins at the site in as many weeks.

The schoolchildren now face a battle to restock their allotment: many of the tools had been acquired through Morrison’s “Let’s Grow” voucher scheme and will be hard to replace.

“The tools were perfectly sized for children and really well made, so I’ve no idea where to start trying to find more to replace them, or their value,” she said. “We’ll probably have to do some fundraising to buy more.”